


No Beginning, No End

by strangestquiet



Series: No Beginning, No End [1]
Category: Persona 4
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-07
Updated: 2010-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-05 23:17:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 59,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangestquiet/pseuds/strangestquiet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years post-game, Dojima is killed in an accident, and Souji and Yosuke move back to Inaba to take care of Nanako. As they adjust to becoming a family, Yosuke struggles to reconnect with her while Souji pieces together the truth of his uncle's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part 1 in a series, followed by [Fight For Us Both](http://archiveofourown.org/works/47162) and [The Scars We Get Together](http://archiveofourown.org/works/149684).

_March 2017_

_   
_

It was almost dawn when his phone started ringing and wouldn't stop.

The first call barely stirred him out of a deep sleep. With a miserable groan, Souji freed his hand from beneath a mountain of twisted blankets and slapped blindly at his alarm clock. The ringing coincidentally ceased at the same instant that his hand came down on top of the snooze button, so he heaved a tired sigh and rolled over, pressing his cold nose into the pocket of warmth that had materialized overnight between the comforter and his pillow.

The second call came barely a minute later, but it felt like he'd slept for hours. This time, it jerked him awake with a start that left him dizzy and sick to the pit of his stomach. No, wait - that was the start of a hangover. Either way, some combination of his movements and that piercing ringtone (whose _was_ that? He couldn't tell. God, he just needed a good night's sleep...) caused the person lying next to him to stir and give an exhausted, annoyed little huff.

"Who the hell... what time is it?" Yosuke groaned.

"Dunno..." He wasn't about to get out of bed to go check, either. The city had been hit with a late winter blizzard out of nowhere this year, and their cheapskate landlord was still too stubborn to let them turn the heat up very far. Screw getting out of bed. Besides, if he rewound the events of last night - or rather, a few hours ago - he could be fairly certain that his phone was safely tucked into his pants' pocket. Where his pants were was a detail that had obviously not been important enough for his memory to retain.

"Dude, isn't that... Chie?" asked Yosuke, a second after the phone had stopped ringing again.

Now that he mentioned it, Souji realized that the strange ringtone _had_ sounded an awful lot like a warbling midi rendition of the Trial of the Dragon theme. He didn't need to wait very long for Yosuke's suspicions to be confirmed, as his missing phone began to ring a third time.

"Ugh, it's like..." Yosuke rolled over and squinted at the clock. He needed glasses all the time these days, but they weren't anywhere to be found. "It's almost five. What the hell could she want?"

"Pants," Souji demanded groggily, as he reluctantly shoved the warm blankets aside and sat up in bed. He figured Yosuke would have been the one to have seen them last, after all.

Yosuke was absolutely no help, suggesting completely random places he should search while he prowled about the darkened bedroom, tripping over just about every object in the vicinity except the thing he was looking for. He tried listening to the ring, but it never seemed to change in volume, no matter where he stood in the room. It had stopped again, besides.

"Did you fold them up and put them away? I catch you doing that sometimes, you know. You're the only person I've ever met who actually folds his clothes while he's right in the middle of-"

"Shh," Souji hissed. A pounding headache was developing somewhere behind his eyes, and Yosuke's chattering wasn't doing anything to soothe it. After he finished chewing out Chie for calling so early on a Sunday morning, he needed some painkillers and a tall glass of water, and then he was going to sleep the rest of the day away. If he could find his damn phone, first...

It rang again, and this time, Souji knew where it was coming from. He headed to the bedroom door, opened it, and peered around the corner into the bathroom. Bingo. Right where he'd left them - in the sink, for some reason he couldn't quite recall. He fished his phone out of the pocket and flipped it open, already heading back to bed as he answered it, somewhat irritably.

"Chie... do you have any idea what time-"

"Souji..."

His already weakened stomach bottomed out at the sound of her voice cracking over his name. Yosuke didn't need his glasses to catch the disquieted look that he knew had crossed his own face, and he straightened up as Souji sank onto the edge of the bed.

On the other end of the phone, miles away in Inaba, Chie sniffled. "Souji, your uncle..."

He didn't remember the rest. Some time later, he found himself sitting on the floor and propped up against the bed, with Yosuke kneeling beside him and pressing a cold, damp cloth to his forehead. His phone was no longer in his hand.

"...first thing in the morning. Well, in a few hours, I guess. Okay?"

Souji groaned. "What...?"

Yosuke balanced the phone between his ear and his shoulder, and tried to quiet Souji by running his free hand through his hair. It didn’t work.

“Yosuke, get off the phone. I need to… I have to…” Have to _what_? Call Dojima? He wouldn’t answer. Not now. Not anymore. _That’s okay_, Souji thought, _I’ll leave him a message. He’ll get back to me, he always does…_

He blindly reached for his phone, but Yosuke took his wrist and held it at bay; it wasn’t difficult, with Souji in this state. “All right, we’ll be there. I’ll get my parents to pick us up at – hey, Chie, who’s … watching Nanako-chan?”

As soon as her name left Yosuke’s lips, Souji was up and stumbling to the bathroom, barely making it in time to vomit a disgusting mixture of alcohol and yesterday’s dinner into the toilet. He heaved until nothing else came up, until his stomach hurt for being empty, until the effort made his eyes sting and then prickle and then stream with tears.

_This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. It’s a joke. There’s nothing to worry about. Everything’s fine-_

“Souji…” Yosuke appeared beside him, and he jumped, startled. The water in the toilet was clear and clean; either he hadn’t thrown up at all, or he’d blacked out and Yosuke had erased the evidence. “Oh God, Souji, I’m so sorry…”

As he felt Yosuke press his head down against his shoulder, he tried to protest – he didn’t want to hear this, it was as good as confirmation that this was reality – but all he could manage was a tired, scratchy noise in the back of his throat as he buried his head into his arms and leaned heavily on the toilet.

When the sun finally rose, like this was any day other than the first one without Ryotaro Dojima, Souji and Yosuke were still awake, haphazardly throwing clothes into suitcases and not speaking. It was the first in a long string of restless nights that awaited them back in Inaba.  



	2. Chapter 2

Yosuke had always felt like an intruder in the Dojima residence. He was only tangentially connected to the place through Souji, and it wasn’t even really Souji’s house. On top of that, he’d never gotten the impression that Dojima particularly liked him.

_Don’t take it personally_, Souji had said. _He doesn’t really _like _anyone_. When Yosuke had pointed out that Dojima liked _him_ just fine, Souji had backpedaled. _Yeah, but I’m family. He has to like me._

He appreciated Souji’s effort, but he’d long since resigned himself to gruff greetings and steely, piercing, suspicious stares. Dojima had always _known_ they’d been lying about their involvement with the murder cases, all those years ago, but the truth had been fantastic enough to keep him from closing in on them. His cold shoulder had eased significantly after Nanako’s rescue and recovery, but Yosuke had still found himself the subject of the detective’s keen attention on more than one occasion.

_"He hates me. I can’t do this."_

_"He doesn’t hate you. I’m kind of like a younger brother to him. He’s just looking out for me."_

_"You know, that’s exactly what this feels like? I wasn’t even this worried meeting your dad for the first time. I feel like he’s gonna accuse me of stealing you away or something."_

_"I think I kind of resent that."_

Yosuke remembered visiting Souji in November of the year he’d been in Inaba; they’d all taken their turns bringing questionable meals and their awkward but attentive company during those two months he’d spent in the Dojima residence alone. The tiny house had somehow seemed huge and imposing when it was empty, dark and lifeless without the people who had made it a home. Yosuke recalled staying with Souji until well past dark, saying a soft goodbye at the doorstep the first night, crashing on the living room couch the second night, cramming onto that tiny, god-forsaken sofa in Souji’s room the third, and then finally, inexplicably, curling up in his best friend’s futon and sharing his too-small-for-two pillow on the fourth. They didn’t talk about it in the morning, but the warmth and comfort had kept the oppressive emptiness of the house at bay, and carried Souji through the night, and Yosuke had supposed that in the end, that was all that mattered.

Souji never asked him to stay, never mind to curl up next to him as he slept, but Yosuke knew him well enough to gauge when that was what he wanted, and when he otherwise wanted to be left alone. As December had crept onward to the end of the year and the finality that awaited them there, instances of the former quickly had quickly begun outnumbering the latter. And then suddenly, for the first time, the Dojima residence was somewhere he was _needed_, somewhere he felt he belonged.

And now…

He scuffed his shoe against the pavement, and kicked a small, broken fragment of that house back to the other side of the police line.

Now it was gone.

“The fire started sometime around midnight,” said the detective who had escorted them to the charred, blackened plot of land where the remains of the house stood. “Fire crews are still working out the cause, but judging from where they found the body, we at least know what happened to him. We haven’t talked with his daughter yet, poor thing, but since she made it out and he didn’t, we can be pretty sure he went back into the house after he got her out. Smoke inhalation got him.”

Yosuke glanced at Souji. He was calmer now, clearer, stronger, although his frame bent visibly under the weight of his fatigue and a massive hangover from their graduation celebrations last night. His face remained completely impassive at the detective’s explanation, and he nodded, once, in acceptance – but that was just the mask. Yosuke knew better than that. He’d seen him like this only once before, at the hospital all those years ago, and then during the night sometimes when they’d gone back to Dojima’s house together to try and get at least a little sleep, and he knew how thin that placid veneer really was. Their friends had all reported Souji to be worn out, but in good spirits after their respective visits; the discovery that Souji had chosen to show such a different face to _him_ had caused him a great deal of confusion.

“When you find out something, you’ll let me know?” Souji asked the detective softly.

“Of course. Let me take your number. Where will you be staying?”

“With a friend,” said Souji. Yosuke stared hard at a chunk of debris that used to be a window frame, and tried to suppress a reaction while Souji gave the man his contact information. “The manager of the Amagi Inn has arranged for Nanako and I to stay there until we can figure out… what to do next, I guess.”

“That’s good,” said the detective with a solemn nod. “Small town like this, I expect you’ll see more of that kind of help. Detective Dojima was highly respected.”

“Thank you.”

After the detective had taken his leave, Yosuke surreptitiously reached over and grasped Souji’s fingers lightly in his own.

“Can’t believe it’s gone,” Yosuke said with a soft sigh, as he ran his free hand through his disheveled hair. Might have been his imagination, but he could swear it came away dirty, his skin darkened by the ash still floating invisibly on the air. They stood there, breathing it in, all that was left of what those particles used to be. “Whaddya think … y’know… happened?”

Souji just shook his head, clearly too tired, too emotionally and physically beleaguered to even venture a guess. The silence stretched on, awkwardly, until Yosuke cleared his throat and tried again.

“Y’know, you could… stay with me at my parents’ place. You and Nanako-chan, I mean. Things are gonna get busy, and you’re gonna need help looking after her…”

This time, Souji offered a weak and very brief smile before shaking his head again. “Not a good idea,” he said, and Yosuke already knew why. Same reason the invitation to the Amagi Inn hadn’t been extended to him – to everyone in Inaba, he was Souji’s roommate, and nothing more. Rooming together back here where it was entirely unnecessary would do nothing but raise eyebrows they weren’t interested in raising at the moment.

“Yeah, figured you’d say that,” Yosuke mumbled. “But I thought I should ask.”

“Thank you,” said Souji. There was considerably more warmth behind it, when he said it to Yosuke.  
  
They stood there for several minutes longer, saying their goodbyes to the ruined house until the late winter sun finally dipped below the horizon. When the cold sunlight was no longer shining in his eyes, Souji blinked and shifted, as though under a spell that had just been broken, and he checked his watch.

“Nanako-chan should be back by now. I’m going to go see her.”

He pulled away without warning, leaving Yosuke’s hand grasping air for a moment, and started the long walk up the hill and toward the bus stop at the shopping district. Yosuke had to catch up with him.

“Hey, partner, wait – I can come along, if you…”

Souji waited. When he turned to face him and stepped in close, Yosuke felt his face heat up. _Seriously, here? We’re in the middle of the street..._ But Souji stopped short of wrapping him up in his arms, or kissing him, or doing anything that they were used to when they were on their own in a city where they could be safely anonymous to everyone around them. Funny, how it felt safer on a crowded city street corner than on a deserted back road of sleepy Inaba, where gossip and rumours seemed to spread as ruthlessly and efficiently as the fire that had torn down Dojima’s house.

“Not tonight,” said Souji, and the tired but appreciative look on his face effectively silenced any further argument from Yosuke. “She’ll be glad to see you, but I think I need to spend some time alone with her first. Tomorrow morning?”

Yosuke nodded in understanding. “Yeah. Sure, man, whatever you say.”

Even though it was out of his way, Yosuke walked him all the way to the bus stop and saw him off on his way to the Amagi Inn. He realized once he was on his own that he was ravenously hungry, having eaten next to nothing since they’d left the city that morning, so he wandered the shopping district to Souzai Daigaku in order to grab something to eat, only to find it boarded up.

_Closed down long ago_, the owner of Aiya informed him when he asked about it. _Just another victim of Junes_. There didn’t seem to be any malice behind the statement, but nor did he mince words. Maybe he’d forgotten who Yosuke was. He wasn't sure if he was grateful for that or not. Somehow, being forgotten by Inaba was a more terrifying prospect than being despised by it.

He sighed as he sat down with his food in a booth he never remembered being so small, and barely ate half of it.

He didn’t seem to fit anywhere, these days.


	3. Chapter 3

Yukiko greeted him warmly in the lobby of the Amagi Inn, looking much the same as she had when he’d said goodbye to her on the day before he left Inaba, but with a newfound maturity that marked her recently acquired status as manager. She made a tentative inquiry about his health, and he gave her a perfunctory response of _fine, holding on, getting through,_ which was partially true. He felt terrible about not being able to accept anyone’s sympathy, but he still couldn’t properly process it, at that point. It still wasn’t quite real.

“Nanako-chan came back from the hospital this afternoon,” said Yukiko, as she showed him to his room at the end of the hall. “This is yours. Nanako-chan’s is next door.”

“How is she?” Souji asked, as if he didn’t already know the answer.

“About as well as you could expect,” said Yukiko. “She’s completely worn out, though. Chie’s with her in the hot springs right now; we thought she could do with a hot bath to help her sleep tonight. She’s been asking for you…”

“Sorry. I got here as soon as I could,” he sighed. “But, thank you, for everything. I promise we’ll be out of your way after the funeral.”

A stern expression crossed her face; it might have cowed him, had he been in a better mood. “Now you’re just being rude. You are _not_ in the way, Souji-kun. This is the least I could do for you, and for Nanako-chan, so please let me do it.”

Souji smiled and slid open the door to his room, pretending to be interested in what it looked like inside. Tasteful, traditional, clean – immaculate, really, even by his standards. The inn was clearly thriving under Yukiko’s attentive direction, he thought, as he wandered inside. He’d been here before heading to what was left of Dojima’s house with Yosuke and the detective, and he noticed his bags already tucked neatly into a corner. When he motioned for Yukiko to sit with him at the table, she hesitated for a second – she must have been busy, he thought guiltily – but she obliged him without complaint.

“Rise can’t make it back right away,” she said by way of making small talk as she settled onto the floor, “but she assured me she’d be here in time for the funeral. Kanji-kun said Naoto-kun told him the same thing.” She bowed her head, staring intently at her hands, folded up neatly in her lap. “I wish everyone was coming back for something happier, but…”

“It’s okay. It’ll be good to see everyone again, regardless.”

Her strained expression indicated that she didn’t believe him, but she pressed on anyway. “How are your parents managing to handle the funeral from so far away?”

Souji shifted a little, uncomfortably. He’d been hoping to avoid having to answer that question, and maybe hoping that if he left it long enough, he’d be able to give a different answer. “They’re not. They’re overseas again and I just keep getting their voicemail when I call. They don’t even _know_ yet.”

“So then, who’s taking care of…? Oh, Souji-kun, don’t tell me...”

“I have to. I’m literally the only family he has here, except for Nanako, and it’s not like I’d make her do it even if she could. There’s no one else.”

“You can’t do this alone. Funerals are extremely expensive, and horrendous to plan, even when you’re _not_ grieving.”

He waved off her worries, in part hoping he could wave them away in himself by doing so. She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, but he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be thinking about it just yet. Maybe after sleep, or a meal, or whenever he didn’t feel like he was being split apart straight down the center of his body. “I'm sure he had some insurance to help pay for it.  My parents will help me out with the rest, once they do find out, and I still have some money saved up from all that stuff we used to sell to Daidara. It’ll be all right.”   
  
He glossed over the part about grieving. As long as he didn’t have to think about it too much, as long as he kept himself busy doing what he did best – taking care of things, taking care of _people_ – then he could get through this, too. It was always how he’d managed crises back when they still called him “leader”; he didn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work now.

“Well, then, you have to _promise_ me you will not do what I know you’re going to do, and let me help,” she said firmly, and Souji wasn’t sufficiently witless at the moment to defy her. “I’ll get you in touch with the people you’ll need to talk to in order to arrange everything, okay?”

Souji nodded to indicate his complicity. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. And don’t worry about Nanako-chan. I can look after her when I’m not busy, and so can Chie and Kanji-kun. Yosuke-kun too, now that he’s back.” Yukiko hesitated a moment, and waited for Souji to meet her eyes before continuing. “Um… what do you plan to do now, anyway? About Nanako-chan…”

“Good question,” Souji sighed. “Take her back to the city with me and Yosuke, I guess. Obviously she can’t stay here alone. We don’t really live anywhere close to a middle school though…”

Yukiko looked downcast. Maybe. Everybody looked downcast to Souji today, even the other passengers on the two buses and two trains he’d spent most of his day riding. He was about to ask her what was wrong when another voice drifted in from the hall.

“Oh – Nanako-chan, look, he’s already here.”

He looked up, not entirely prepared for what he would see in the doorway. Chie was there, giving him a friendly, if subdued little wave, which he returned half-heartedly. His attention was fixed on the girl standing next to her.

Souji didn’t remember his aunt Chisato very well, but he knew from the pictures Dojima had shown him that Nanako was growing to look very much like her. She was bigger than he remembered, much taller, her face paler and – _gaunt, tight, haunted_ \- thinner, although he wasn’t sure how much of that was lack of sleep and the stress of the day wearing her down.

The last time he had seen her, she’d been incapable of manifesting a Shadow or a Persona, given her age and underdeveloped ego. He had no doubt now, looking into her reddened eyes and seeing nothing but pain and _awareness_, that that would no longer be the case.

“Nanako-chan…” he started, as he got to his feet.

She didn’t speak. What she did do was cross the room in long, determined strides, throw her arms around his waist, and sob brokenly into his shirt. The sound gutted him, leaving in its wake a gaping wound and an ache that hadn’t been this raw since he’d been curled up on his bathroom floor with Yosuke twelve hours ago.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her trembling shoulders and burying his face into her hair. She felt so _small_ like this, like she was seven years old again and he was comforting her after a nasty fall on the pavement outside her house. That’s all it was. She’d let her tears leak through his shirt for a minute, and then insist that she was too old to be crying over a skinned knee, and she could still walk, big bro, really, she was a big girl…

It wasn’t until Yukiko joined Chie in the hallway and politely closed the door behind her as she left that Souji felt his chest burn with a sob he was fighting desperately to suppress. He had to hold it in, hold it together, be the strong, responsible big brother he’d always been, because if he couldn’t do it _now_, when she needed him most, then what use was he?

“B-Big bro…” she sobbed, her voice tiny and strained in a way that made his throat ache in sympathy. When he opened his mouth to respond, the sob escaped in a wet hiccup, and then it was a rapid downward spiral from there.

They didn’t get a chance to talk after all. The potent combination of heavy crying and the hot springs rendered Nanako unconscious almost immediately after she had quieted. Souji carried her to his futon, trembling and exhausted himself, dried his eyes on his sleeve, and sat awake most of the night.


	4. Chapter 4

Being back in his parents’ house after so long was less like coming home than it was like hovering around the outskirts of a former life that had somehow left him behind. The living room furniture had been rearranged. The food in the cupboards and refrigerator was neither what he remembered eating while he still lived here, nor what he and Souji usually bought when they went out for groceries. The shell of the house was still there, still familiar even though he had only lived in it for a couple of years, but everything inside was just off by a degree or two, like a picture frame hanging crookedly.

_Guess I can’t complain. At least I still _have_ a house…_

Yosuke had realized to his dismay shortly after moving into their new home in Inaba that the sun shone directly into his bedroom in the mornings; the patch of sunlight started on the wall in the early morning, and then slowly tracked a path down toward his futon. By the time the sun was shining in his eyes, it usually meant he already should have been up for school and would have to forgo breakfast if he wanted to make it on time.

When he opened his eyes that morning, after a rough night of tossing and turning and finally getting to sleep just as the sky had been starting to lighten outside, the patch of sunlight was already halfway across the floor.

“Fuck!”

He dressed quickly, only catching that he’d put his shirt on inside out when he stopped in the bathroom to run a brush hastily through his hair. Downstairs there was a note from his mother pinned up on the refrigerator – something about lunch and working late – but he didn’t bother to stop and read it in its entirety. If he didn’t hurry, he’d miss the next bus to the Inn, and he was late as it was.

He had to run to the stop in the shopping district, and then chase the bus for a few meters before getting on, but he made it in time. Ignoring the driver’s annoyed glare, he threw himself down onto a seat near the back and slumped against the window while he caught his breath. He took the opportunity to call Souji to let him know he was on his way, but the attempt netted him nothing but his voicemail, so he sent a text instead.

_b their in 10_

No doubt prompted by the text, Yosuke found Souji waiting for him on the stone stairs leading up to the front doors of the Amagi Inn when he arrived, although he was talking on his phone to someone else when Yosuke was close enough to greet him. No wonder he couldn’t get through, he thought idly as he waited for Souji to be done with his conversation; he was already hard at work.

Yosuke had spent the better part of yesterday being irrationally angry at the Setas for unintentionally forcing this responsibility on their son. It wasn’t fair. Souji didn’t have any idea what to do, and Yosuke felt rather useless for not being able to help him figure it out. Still, Souji had reminded him, it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter, so there was no point in being upset. The only other family Dojima had was a thirteen-year-old girl who desperately wanted her father back. None of this was fair to her, either.

“Sorry,” Souji apologized as he hung up. “Lots to do already, I guess. What are you doing here?”

The question caught Yosuke off-guard. “What d’you mean? I said I wanted to see Nanako-chan and you said ‘tomorrow’, right?”

“She’s already gone,” Souji explained with a frown. “You didn’t get my message?”

“What mess- oh.” His mother’s note on the fridge suddenly flashed in his mind. “No, I guess not.”

“She spent most of yesterday at the hospital, so the police need to talk with her today. She probably won’t be back for a while, but it shouldn’t take all day. Chie won’t let them bother her too much, I’m sure.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.” He suddenly felt foolish, having rushed all the way here for nothing, but he supposed he should be used to that by now. Reading Souji’s notes in their apartment had never been one of his strong suits either. “How is she?”

“Not good, but she slept through the night, so she’s a little steadier than yesterday.”

“Speaking of sleeping through the night,” said Yosuke, climbing a few steps so that they were on an even level, “you definitely look like you didn’t.”

Souji smiled wryly, turning his phone over and over in his hands; Yosuke recognized it as a nervous habit of his, but he’d never bothered pointing it out before. He felt like if he did, then Souji would stop doing it, and he really needed all the help he could get in &lt;i&gt;Souji Seta's Non-Verbal Communication 101&lt;/i&gt;.  “Do I look that bad? I just have a lot on my mind, I guess. Yukiko handed me a list of people to talk to about this funeral stuff that’s damn near long as my arm.”

“Anything I can do to help?” he asked, although he was sure he already knew the answer to that question. His suspicion was confirmed as Souji shook his head.

“No. I barely know what to do myself, much less how to direct someone else to do it. When’s it being held, how many people can we expect, what to do about the coffin and flower arrangements and…” Souji trailed off, with a sigh and another shake of the head. “Shit. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

“Yeah.” _Me neither,_ Yosuke thought. He’d promised himself that he would do whatever it took to help Souji through this difficult time, but he’d forgotten that getting Souji to allow anybody to help him was nowhere near as easy as it should have been. The time last year that he had gone to classes all day and then to kendo practice with a raging fever stood out particularly clearly in his memory. Still, Yosuke was determined. This was what it was like to be in a relationship with someone, right? Coasting through the high points and avoiding the lows wasn’t how it worked.

“Listen, I have to go,” said Souji, slowly descending the steps as he spoke. “I’m meeting with the priest at the temple, and then I have some other business to take care of in town. Not really sure when I’ll be back, so … I’ll call you tonight?”

Yosuke automatically grabbed for his hand as he moved away – but voices from the lobby of the Inn broke the morning quiet and startled him, and he caught himself at the last moment.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, and he shoved his hands deep into his pockets as a handful of guests streamed out of the Inn and passed them by on the stairs. “Tonight.”

Yosuke waved him off as Souji took his leave, and then decided to do the same after saying a brief hello to Yukiko.

“I’m worried about Souji-kun,” she said. “And Nanako-chan, of course, but there’ll be a lot of people looking out for her. He probably doesn’t even realize that he needs to take care of _himself_, too.”

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” Yosuke agreed, thinking that it maybe sounded like she was indirectly urging him to keep an eye on his best friend. He had to hold himself back from telling her exactly how goddamn difficult Souji made that sometimes.

It felt like a waste to just go straight home after that failure of a morning, so Yosuke wandered around town for lack of anything better to do. He hadn’t realized what a mistake that was until he was smack in the middle of the shopping district and it was too late to make a quick escape back to his house.

“Did you hear about Detective Dojima?”

“Oh, yes, that was his house that burned down the other night...”

Yosuke spared the gossiping housewives a glance, torn between interest and disgust. He tried not to listen, but they were difficult to escape – it had started raining, and he was waiting in line in Shiroku to buy himself an umbrella. They stood between him and the exit.

“I wonder what could have happened…?”

“Didn’t you hear? It was a kitchen fire.”

“In the middle of the night? Are you sure? I heard it started with a cigarette. So terrible to smoke inside a house, and with a little girl there, too…”

“Actually,” said an older woman who was standing in line in front of Yosuke, “Somebody told me it was probably arson. I imagine you cross a lot of people, in Dojima-san’s line of work…”

And so on. Yosuke hurried out of Shiroku with his umbrella in a particularly sour mood, but now that he’d started noticing it, the gossip was inescapable. One way or another, it seemed like everybody in town was dying to know why such a terrible thing had happened to such a good family, and everybody had their own opinions formed from speculation and hearsay. He hoped that they had the good sense to stop chattering when Souji was around, but who knew? His time in Inaba had been brief. Maybe they’d forgotten all about him.

Either way, he couldn’t take any more, and headed for home in a huff. The flood plain was deserted when it rained like this, and he was grateful for the solitude as he stalked across it, imagining all the smart-ass things he would say to those rumourmongers the next time he bumped into one of them on the street.

As he passed the stairs leading down to the banks of the Samegawa, Yosuke stopped. There was a young girl perched on one of the large rocks at the river’s edge, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs, her back hunched against the chill of the March rain. Curiosity overcame his self-righteous anger at everyone in Inaba, and he descended the steps as he called out to her.

“Hey, is something wrong?” he asked. He came up behind her and extended his umbrella until it shielded her small body from the rain. “You’re not even wearing a coat! You’re gonna catch a cold like this if you’re not careful…”

It only took him another second to realize he was talking to Nanako Dojima.

“N-Nanako-chan! Sorry kiddo, I didn’t even realize it was you. You’ve gotten so big.”

“Yosuke-nii?” she asked quietly, reaching up and tilting the umbrella away so she could see him properly.

But strangely, the faint smile on her face froze, and then died completely as soon as they made eye contact. He felt his own smile follow suit at this unsettling reaction. “Something on my face?” he asked with a nervous chuckle.

A look of confusion passed over her features before she shook her head and turned away, staring back into the water once more as though nothing had happened.

Yosuke frowned. Nanako clearly took after Souji in the “let’s let Yosuke comfort us” department. “Hey, your brother said you were supposed to be with Chie at the police station today. What are you doing out here by yourself?”

“I hate it there,” she said, so softly that Yosuke almost didn’t hear it over the splash of rain on the surface of the river. Before he could ask her to elaborate, however, another familiar voice called out to them from the road. He turned in time to see Chie bounding down the stairs, looking only a little bit silly with her neon green umbrella juxtaposed with her solemn police uniform.

“There you are,” she sighed with relief as she joined them at the river’s edge. “Sheesh, I almost had a heart attack when I realized you were gone. You know, if you wanted to leave, you should have said something.  I would have taken you back to the Inn right away.”

Nanako hunkered down into an even tighter ball on top of her rock. “I don’t think Detective Satou would have let me…”

“Was he bothering you? That jerk should know better.” Chie held out her hand. “C’mon, Nanako-chan. I’ll take you back to the Inn, okay? You leave him to me.”

She nodded, slowly, and uncurled her limbs from around herself as she slid off the rock and onto the soft, muddy riverbank.

“Don’t you have to get back to work?” Yosuke asked. “I can take her to the Inn if you want…”

“Oh, would you? That’d be great. I bet that stupid detective was upsetting her with ridiculous questions all morning. I’m gonna go give him a piece of my mind. Nanako-chan, is it okay if Yosuke goes with you?”

Nanako glanced at him briefly, the barest of hesitation, but then she nodded and the matter was settled. Yosuke exhaled a little sigh of relief. All right. So the world was normal, and there was nothing wrong with him – it really was just Souji who seemed to refuse his assistance at every turn. Not that the thought necessarily made him feel any better, but at least he was _doing_ something.

He gave up on attempting conversation halfway to the Amagi Inn. There weren’t even any of the half-hearted replies Nanako had offered him and Chie earlier; she simply seemed content to ignore him for the entire trip. He wasn’t sure what he had done to offend her, so he kept quiet so as not to risk doing it again.

_Dojima-san would have been proud of her talent for snubbing,_ he mused, before the thought made him sick to his stomach.


	5. Chapter 5

Souji didn’t like it when his friends mentioned that he never had a Shadow. Not that it was a frequent topic of conversation, but it had come up a few times back during the murder case, and a few times in the intermittent years. On bad days, the reminder felt like an accusation, like he was unable to fully understand or appreciate what they all had gone through because he hadn’t experienced it himself. On good days, he wanted to tell them that it simply wasn’t true.

Everyone had a Shadow.

Maybe not the kind with yellow eyes and a twisted, mocking voice, the kind that smiled and taunted and forced you to choke on your own failures before tearing you apart. But even if it wasn’t given a chance to manifest in Teddie’s world, people in the real world still had them. The only difference was that theirs had never stepped outside their bodies.

His apparent lack of a Shadow self had perplexed him for a while, until he got to university and recalled Naoto mentioning once that it was a psychological term. The memory led to him spending a week holed up in the library, where he discovered Analytical Psychology, which in turn led to him switching majors, and from that day on life had never made more sense. It was downright strange, being free to talk about things like shadows and personas with his classmates – Yosuke had positively paled the first time he overheard them during one of their study sessions – and he felt sort of guilty about it for a while, like he was there for all the wrong reasons. He wasn’t a scientist; he didn’t have the right mindset for it, or a desire to chain himself to a university forever. Nor did he think he was capable of distancing himself from people well enough to survive clinical work. In the end, he figured it was enough that he had learned something significant about himself, and it certainly didn’t hurt that he’d gotten a degree out of the deal at the same time.

The point in all this was that he had learned, very early on in both his university career and his relationship with Yosuke, that he definitely had a Shadow, and it was every bit as ugly as the ones his friends had shown him.

Four days after his uncle’s body had been dragged from the wreck of his burning house, Souji gathered with what seemed like half of Inaba to say their farewells. The priest was reading sutras and he was struggling to stay awake in the front row. Exhaustion seemed to seep all the way down into his bones; he probably hadn’t had more than ten hours’ sleep total since arriving in Inaba. He wasn’t sure if his hands shook when he held them up and looked at them, or if it was just his head swimming and his eyes playing tricks on him.

The talking, the planning, the scheduling, the socializing – the end of all this couldn’t possibly come soon enough. Except it wouldn’t be the end, he realized dimly, as he sensed Nanako shifting next to him, trying and mostly failing to hold back tears. The end was too far off to even imagine.

This was only the beginning.

Souji and Nanako sat in the front row, closest to the casket, and were subsequently the first to offer prayers and incense. Dojima’s friends and co-workers and other people from town who had known him better than the others packed in behind them, in order of their closeness to him. Souji’s friends were wedged in somewhere between the two sections; he’d wanted them to sit in front with him and Nanako, but everyone he spoke to was adamantly against it. It didn’t seem to matter how important they were to the two of them – they weren’t family.

Never mind that he very much counted Yosuke as his family, or that all of them had once thrown themselves into a dangerous, unknown world to rescue Nanako, and would have gladly done so a hundred times over again.

Never mind that Souji’s parents still weren’t there. A blizzard in America had delayed their initial flight long enough to cause them to miss their subsequent connections; they’d be at least another day, if not more. He bore the frustration and the disappointment stoically, as befitting his family position in this instance, but inside, beneath all that tightly-held control, he was livid.

This was where his Shadow came in.

_Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is._ That had been one of the first statements to strike him deeply during his time at the library all those years ago; he felt it had rung true for his friends, and as time passed, became increasingly afraid that it might be true for him as well. He wondered if the reason why Yosuke and Chie had failed to produce their own worlds along with their Shadows had really been because they hadn’t had the strength of will to do so – highly unlikely, he thought, knowing them as he did – or simply because they had been more conscious of the truth of their insecurities than the others had been, resulting in less extreme Shadows. The harder they denied their feelings, the more that had been at stake – Yukiko’s freedom, Teddie’s existence, Kanji and Rise and Naoto’s self-images and identities – the “blacker and denser” the result.

So what was his? No matter how much he thought on it, he hadn’t been able to reach a satisfying conclusion. He always tried his best to be there for the people he cared about, to do what was asked and expected of him, no matter if it was the very last thing in the world he wanted to do. Like lose hours of sleep during exam periods to stay up late and help Yosuke study, even though his best friend never took responsibility for procrastinating. Like put aside his own grief and put up a stone face and act like managing a family member’s funeral was the most natural thing he could possibly be doing. He handled these things like he handled everything else in life: by telling himself that he didn’t really mind it because it needed to be done, because he might as well man up and do what others couldn’t, because people _relied_ on him to make things right.

And there it was. As utterly terrible as he felt for Nanako right now, he envied the permission given to her to cry openly, to have someone to hold her and shield her from the world while she came to terms with her loss. As much as he despised the town gossips – and their gossiping had not escaped his notice – he envied their freedom to make a perfunctory appearance at the funeral, offer him pretty, meaningless words of condolence, and then move on with their lives.

As much as he’d wanted the distraction of something to do and someone to take care of over the past few days, he was just so deeply _tired_ of it all. He wanted to be the one someone would comfort. He wanted someone else to take responsibility. He resented his parents for not being there, for _never_ being there. He resented the city for being the place he needed to be, and Inaba for being the place he couldn’t leave.

He resented Dojima for dying.

 

***

 

But not as much as he resented the implication that his death hadn’t been an accident.

_“I’m sorry,” Souji said into his cell phone that morning, as he stood in the garden of the Amagi Inn to take the call. “Say that again. Because it sounded to me like you just suggested that my uncle killed himself.”_

_The detective from the other day – Satou, Souji remembered – was quick to correct him. “No, Seta-san, I’m not suggesting anything of the sort. Exactly the opposite, in fact.”_

_“So then... this was deliberate. You’re saying someone set that fire on purpose.”_

_“It’s a possibility. The blaze started in the garage; it wasn’t locked, but the door between the garage and the main house was. Now, from our investigation and our interviews with your uncle’s daughter, there are things that simply aren’t adding up. The neighbours said that the house burned very quickly, but the two of them managed to escape in time. There was no one else in the house. What reason would Detective Dojima have to go back inside?”_

_“You’re asking the wrong person.”_

_“Probably, but your cousin doesn’t know either. She says that Dojima-san had been very upset for several days, even when they were fleeing the house. Several of us at the station also noticed that Dojima-san had been rather distracted lately – not quite himself. We’ve been asking his daughter if there was something wrong at home, but she hasn’t been very forthcoming.”_

_“What do you expect?” Souji snapped, exasperation carrying through in his tone. “Her father is dead, and you’re suggesting that he deliberately went back into his house to die!”_

_“I didn’t say-“_

_“But that’s what you meant. Listen to me closely, Detective – my uncle loved his daughter more than anything else in the entire world, and there is no way_   
_ he would have done something so remarkably stupid as going back into a burning building with the intention of not coming back out. He would not leave her like that. It’s absurd, it’s insulting to him and to us, and I strongly suggest you do not ever make that mistake again.”_

_“Seta-san, I know this is a very stressful time for you both, and that this is probably the last thing you want to have to deal with right now-“_

_“No, you’re right, I don’t want to deal with this. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want this to be my responsibility, and I especially don’t want you making this harder than it has to be!”_

_That was his Shadow talking, in the Jungian if not the yellow-eyed sense, and the force of such a spiteful outburst from the otherwise quiet Souji caused Satou to apologize. But Souji missed it. He heard something, turned at what he thought had been footsteps behind him in the main building, but no one was there._

Later, when he went to Nanako’s room to check if she was ready to leave for the funeral parlor, he was unsurprised to find her in tears; she hadn’t really stopped crying since that first night, after all. It didn’t occur to him until just now, as they watched the progression of mourners offering incense at the altar, that she had overheard that conversation.


	6. Chapter 6

Yosuke had spent most of the funeral staring at Souji and Nanako, and trying to pretend like he was doing nothing of the sort. He hated funerals. They were filled with people he didn’t know (even when it had been his grandfather’s), and he couldn’t grieve properly when complete strangers were telling him how sorry they were for his loss. He could only imagine how Souji and Nanako must be taking it. Of course, the reason he could only _imagine_ it was because he hadn’t managed to talk to either of them for more than five minutes each all day. They were understandably busy and overwhelmed, but dammit, he was supposed to be supporting them! He supposed that as long as somebody was doing it, it was fine, but deep down he really wanted it to be him that they would turn to for encouragement.

The cousins weren’t making it easy. Souji was still trying to be the hero, even after all this time. He used to see him do this at school, too; taking on way too many projects and extracurricular activities, getting so buried under the avalanche of responsibility that he sometimes would come to bed maybe an hour or two before Yosuke was ready to get up, and then refusing all offers of assistance. It was a terrible, destructive habit, but he kept _surviving_ it, which gave him no incentive to stop. He’d taken one look at Souji’s distant, sleep-deprived face this morning, and was torn between an outpouring of pity and the powerful urge to just slap him. In the end, he’d settled for a hug; it was safe to do so, in this context (no one would begrudge a mourning relative a hug from anybody, he was sure), but he made sure to give one to Nanako first anyway.

She was another matter entirely. Despite spending a lot of time sleeping over the last few days, Nanako looked even worse than Souji did. Well, that was to be expected; she was barely a teenager and she had already lost both of her parents, not to mention the home where all of them had lived together. Poor kid. Yosuke adored her like she was his own sister, and the two of them had grown closer during his senior year in high school after Souji had moved away, so seeing her so lost and upset just killed him inside. He felt like he’d do anything to put a smile back on her face, but he was also mindful of the fact that she wasn’t ready for that just yet. So he would wait, and stick by the two of them, and maybe eventually something would change for the better.

At least, he hoped so. She was still acting strangely around him, sometimes furtive and shy, sometimes ignoring him outright. Never looking him in the eyes. He hated the idea that she wasn’t comfortable around him for some reason, but he knew he wouldn’t get a chance to find out why for a while, and not knowing was driving him crazy.

“I don’t like seeing Nana-chan so sad,” Teddie said quietly, as he curled up in the corner of the booth at Aiya. Souji and Nanako had to go to Okina for the cremation – family-only, of course, and although that got under Yosuke’s skin a bit, there wasn’t anything to be done about it. The rest of them had decided to get something to eat together, so there they were, all black suits and black dresses and black moods.

“Tell me about it,” Kanji mumbled. He looked downright weird in a suit. Yosuke would have made a comment to that effect on any other day – but not today. “Hate that she’s gotta go through somethin’ like this.”

“At least she has Senpai to look out for her, right?” said Rise, although she didn’t sound altogether convinced that it would be enough. “And us, too. She knows we're all here for her.”

“Hey, what was up with the other day, anyway?” Yosuke asked Chie, who sat across from him at the table. “Did you Galactic Punt that douchebag detective or what?”

“Oh! I totally forgot to tell you, didn’t I?” Chie put down her chopsticks and leaned forward conspiratorially, which only invited the others to lean in as well to hear what she had to say. “That jerkface who was bothering Nanako-chan? He’s the lead detective on Dojima-san’s case. Technically I don’t work with him – different departments and all that – but it’s a small police station after all. Anyway, he’s like, _convinced_ poor Nanako-chan is lying about something, and he wouldn’t stop pestering her with questions that day. Can you believe the nerve of some people? She’s picking bones out of her father’s ashes right now and he puts her through something like that. God, what a creep.”

“Yeah,” Yosuke said, “but did you kick him in the balls, is what I’m asking.”

“No,” she huffed. “He started going on about how terrible it was for the department to lose Dojima-san, and that he could hardly be blamed for wanting to know what really happened if it turned out there was foul play involved. As if that made it okay! I got so mad I just had to leave.”

“His conduct was out of line,” Naoto agreed. “Although I respect his willingness to thoroughly investigate the matter, he has certainly displayed a significant amount of insensitivity in this case. I will see to it that it does not happen again.”

“Naoto-kun, are you thinking of helping out with the investigation?” asked Yukiko.

She nodded. Yosuke thought she looked weird in a suit as well, but then decided that it wasn’t the suit itself so much as the missing hat.  “Yes, I’ve offered my services to the Chief of Police, as a favour and as a friend of Dojima-san and his family. Honestly, my reasoning is similar to Detective Satou’s in this case: if something really did happen, then I’d like to reach that conclusion for myself.”

“That’s a relief,” Chie sighed. “Not that I don’t trust the police, obviously. But this is sort of a special case, y’know? I guess I’m saying that since this has to do with Dojima-san and Nanako-chan, it’s nice to know one of our own is working on it.”

“Yeah!” Rise agreed. “And if Detective Jerkface doesn’t get the hint, Naoto-kun, you can always bring Kanji-kun along with you to make scary faces and help get your point across.”

“Hey…” Kanji warned.

“Yeah, there you go, like that one.”

As Chie, Rise, Kanji and Naoto discussed the finer points of using Kanji as a weapon of intimidation, Yukiko leaned a little closer to Yosuke and drew his attention toward her.

“I need to talk to you about something,” she started quietly. The others didn’t pay her any mind, but Yosuke could practically see Teddie’s ears perking up from his spot in the corner. “The other night, Souji-kun’s first night at the Inn, I asked him what he planned to do about Nanako-chan. He said that he was thinking of taking her back to the city with him. Did he tell you about this?”

Yosuke supposed the way he started with surprise was all the answer she needed, but he responded verbally anyway. “No… I mean, I guess it makes sense, but he never mentioned it to me. He’s been so busy since we got here. We haven’t really had time to talk.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“What do you mean? Am I okay with Nanako-chan living with us? Of course! We can’t exactly leave her on her own…”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean.” Yukiko sighed, staring down into her plate of barely-touched food, and then drew a deep breath. “I mean, are you okay with taking Nanako-chan out of Inaba?”  
  
Yosuke thought about it for a moment. Not being a native of Inaba himself, he knew he wasn’t as rooted here as some other people were; he loved the town he had come to think of as home, but he felt no particular guilt about leaving it for a while to attend university in the city. But Nanako was different. She had lived here all her life. Inaba _was_ her home. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “All of Nanako-chan’s friends and everybody else she knows are all here. Maybe taking her away from familiar surroundings wouldn’t be good for her right now…”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking,” she confirmed with a nod. “And that’s why I think we need to convince Souji-kun to move back here.”

“You mean Sensei might live here again?” said Teddie, sitting up a little straighter.

“It couldn’t hurt to ask him,” Yosuke conceded. “It’s hard to imagine him saying no, especially if we get him from an ‘it’s best for Nanako-chan’ angle.”

“That would be great! Yosuke, that means I can visit you at your parents’ house again, right? Just like before?” Teddie was practically squirming with excitement.

“What? Why would I live…” Yosuke trailed off at the curious looks his partial comment had begun to draw out of both Teddie and Yukiko. And then it dawned on him. If Souji moved back to Inaba, there would no longer be any reason for them to share an apartment – at least not in anyone else’s eyes. They might be able to pass it off as habit, or as a convenient way to share the rent, but rumours in Inaba spread fast. Sooner or later, everyone was going to wonder why Yosuke was still living there when they both should have been thinking about marriage and settling down. And the hell that was sure to break loose if it came out while Nanako still lived with them…

“Uh, I mean, yeah, Ted, of course. That’s if we can convince Souji it’s a good idea.” One thing was for certain – he would need to be on damage control for this one. “I’ll drop by the Inn later tonight when they get back from Okina and talk to him. How does that sound?”

“Great,” said Yukiko, and her relieved smile made him feel a little guilty for thinking so selfishly. “I’ll call you tonight and let you know when they’re back.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

The conversation at the table moved on to other things, mostly potential ways to keep Nanako occupied in the coming days and weeks, but Yosuke didn’t join in. He picked at his food distractedly, and worried himself to the point of nausea. Dinner dragged on, with nothing but the promise of an uncomfortable conversation looming on the horizon.


	7. Chapter 7

“Big Bro…”

“Yeah, Nanako-chan?”

Souji knelt next to her futon as she peeked out from underneath the cover; the movement triggered a strong sense of nostalgia in him. How many times had he tucked her in like this when she was small and her father wasn’t around to do it? There had been so many nights of bedtime stories and nodding off on the couch and staying up just a little later than she would have otherwise been allowed by Dojima. As angry as he had been with his uncle at the time, as tired as he usually was from school all day and chasing after people in the TV world all afternoon, he treasured those moments with her. Even if her father couldn’t be there, he told himself, at least he could step in and give her the comfort she needed. At least she had _someone_, and that made them both feel safe.

He was pretty sure neither of them felt very safe right now.

“Big Bro, are you … going away again?”

The quiet dread in her voice made his stomach turn. Well now. Didn’t he feel like a jerk? “Nanako-chan…” he sighed, reaching out and gently brushing her bangs from her eyes. “Of course not. What gives you that idea?”

She looked away guiltily, turning her face into Souji’s hand in a gesture that was half embarrassed, half comfort-seeking. “I heard you on the phone this morning. You said you didn’t want to be here…”

Souji flinched. Shame colored his cheeks, but he forced himself not to look away or withdraw his hand. “That wasn’t… I was angry at Satou-san, and I said some things I didn’t really mean. Things I really shouldn’t have said. I’m sorry.”

“So you’re not leaving?”

He tried a smile; she wasn’t looking at him, but it would be audible in his voice, and anything that would soothe her fears was worth a try. “I wouldn’t leave you, Nanako-chan. I love you very, very much, and I would do anything to make you happy. So if you want me to stay, I’ll stay.”

When she turned back to him, she was smiling. Just a little bit, and it was dampened somewhat by the tired, fearful look in her eyes, but it was nonetheless there for a few seconds before it faded again. “But you want to move back to the city, right?” she asked quietly. “That’s where your school is. That’s where you live.”

If he were to be perfectly honest with himself, Souji knew that she was right. He’d spent so much of his life up until this point just _drifting_, forced by his parents to move from place to place faster than he could possibly put down roots anywhere. Four years in the city while he went to university was the longest he’d spent in one place since he’d been a child, and he’d _liked it_. He was reluctant to pack up and move again, but ultimately, even more reluctant to force Nanako to do the same.

“Well, I’m done with school for now,” Souji explained, “so that’s not a big deal. And as for where I live… Do you think you’d want to come to the city with me and Yosuke?”

She looked troubled. “I don’t know…”

He nodded. “It’s a big decision. You don’t need to make it right now. But I just want you to know that if you wanted to come live with us, then that’s what we’ll do. And if you want me to stay here, then … this is where I’ll stay.”

“Thank you…” Nanako whispered, the cover pulled all the way up to her nose.

Souji smiled, and leaned over to kiss her forehead. If not for that, he might not have heard the tiny sniffle that escaped her. “Nanako-chan…?”

She pulled the cover higher, up to her eyes this time. He leaned back again to give her space, and his heart sank at the sight of her hiding from him. “I’m all right,” she said, her voice muffled and shaky under the heavy futon cover. “I’m… I’m going to miss him a lot...”

“Yeah. Yeah, me too…”

“But he’s in Heaven, right? With Mom?”  
  
Souji didn’t trust himself to speak, but he knew that Nanako wouldn’t be able to see him nod his head, and he could absolutely not hesitate in his answer for even one second to steady his voice. So when he said, “Yes,” and it came out a little weaker than it should have, he didn’t mind.

Nanako pulled the cover back down, slowly. When it reached her chin, she stopped, delicate fingers curled lightly over the top edge. “I’m glad he’s with her,” she whispered. “But I wish they were here. I don’t think… I don’t think Heaven is as nice as people say it is.”

She was asleep soon after. Souji stayed with her until she didn’t open her eyes anymore, until her breathing evened out and the tension in her face eased away, and then he slipped out of the room as quietly as possible, not really knowing if the tightness in his chest was the urge to laugh or cry or both.

***

  
Despite his exhaustion, he knew sleep wasn’t coming, no matter how long he waited. He curled up on his futon for all of ten minutes before realizing this truth, getting back up, putting his yukata back on, and heading down to the hot spring.

It was deserted at this time of evening, for which he was grateful. Pretty much everybody in town knew his relation to Dojima, and it was difficult to escape their awkward but well-meant expressions of pity and understanding. He didn’t know if he could have stood to deal with it while he was bathing as well. With a relieved sigh, he sank into the water up to his ribs and leaned against the edge of the pool, feeling his tense muscles ache in protest as the heat coaxed them into relaxing again. If anything could put him to sleep, this would probably be it…

Souji’s thoughts turned to Nanako again, as he sank a little further into the steaming water and looked up at the clear night sky. He wasn’t stupid. He knew what was going to happen when Nanako moved in with him, wherever she chose to do it, and the thought scared him in a way he wasn’t sure he was ready for. It had nothing to do with his relationship with Yosuke, although if she was going to be living with them, then she would need to be told about that.

No, the thing that worried him the most was that he knew his position in the Dojima family was about to change yet again. His relationship to them had always been unusually fluid, and over the years he’d found himself adapting his role in their lives as their needs demanded of him. At first he had been a nephew and a cousin, and as time passed that had given way to his role as a brother – a younger one to Dojima, someone he looked up to, and an older one to Nanako, someone he dearly wished to protect. And then there were times, when he'd really needed advice or someone to talk to, that the man had treated him like a son, with the same fierce protectiveness that he had always shown towards Nanako…

That really only left one other role for him now. And the possibility terrified him.

He sighed, rubbing his hands over his face tiredly. He would adjust to this, he always did, but right at that moment, all he wanted was some semblance of things being normal again. To be back in his own apartment, in his own bed, curled up comfortably with –

“So this is where you’re hiding, huh?”

Souji glanced up with a start, disturbed from his thoughts by the voice cutting through the crisp evening air. Yosuke stood by the edge of the spring, fully dressed of course, and gave him a little wave.

“Hey,” said Souji, admittedly surprised to see him, although not unpleasantly so. “What are you doing here?”

“Came to see how you were doing. Haven’t really seen much of you lately…”

“Yeah,” Souji sighed, scratching the back of his neck somewhat uncomfortably. “Sorry, that was my fault. It’ll be better now that the funeral’s over, I think.” Or at least, he _hoped_. But no time like the present to start trying to improve, right? “Coming in?”

“Thought you’d never ask. Give me two seconds.”

Yosuke headed indoors, undoubtedly to the changing area, and re-emerged a minute later without his clothes or glasses, and with a towel wrapped snugly around his hips. Souji would have made some sort of catcall, under more light-hearted circumstances; as it was, he merely watched in silence as Yosuke slipped into the water and waded closer to him.

“Ahh, finally,” he sighed, leaning against the edge of the pool and sinking further below the dark surface of the water, which was much more pleasant than the air temperature at the moment. “Man, I’ve been waiting since high school to get a chance to soak here. I’m telling you, we got cheated that time after the culture festival.”

“It’s relaxing,” Souji agreed, and he shifted a little so that their shoulders touched. He’d spent so much time avoiding people over the last several days that suddenly human contact sounded like an extremely welcome idea. “I put Nanako to bed earlier, but I just couldn’t sleep myself. Seemed like a good a time as any for a bath.”

“I figured. You’re gonna get sick if you don’t take better care of yourself, partner.”

“I hope not. Your get-well-soon soup is awful.”

Yosuke gave a low chuckle and splashed him lightly, which he took without complaint. His hand dipped below the surface of the water and found Souji’s, tracing lightly over the back of it before entwining their fingers together. “Y’know, it’s kind of sad, when you think about it. I can’t do so much as hold your hand on the street, but mostly naked in the hot springs together? A-okay. Go figure.”

This observation drew a wry smile out of Souji. “Hey, I’m not complaining…”

“Neither was I,” said Yosuke with a grin. It subsided a little, as he absently stroked his thumb across Souji’s knuckles, in that way he did when he was thinking and just couldn’t sit still while he did it. “Y’know, I didn’t really get a chance to say it, but … I think what you’re doing for your uncle and for Nanako-chan is awesome. Sucks that your parents still aren’t here, but I think you did the right thing.”

Souji stared at the steam rising off the water in ghostly ripples, not feeling particularly in the mood to talk about that, but appreciative of Yosuke’s effort all the same. “Thanks. That means a lot to me.” He sighed, flexing his fingers around his boyfriend’s for a moment before relaxing them again. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve been ignoring you pretty much since we got here, and I didn't mean to…”

“It’s okay, man…”

“No, it isn’t, really. God, I just… I missed you.”

Yosuke closed his arms around his shoulders, and Souji sank against him gratefully. It was far too easy for him to forget sometimes, in his rush to do _everything_ and solve everybody’s problems, that he needed a chance to stop and breathe from time to time. Yosuke allowed him to do that, kept him grounded in ways he’d never really known he’d needed. He would tell him so, if he thought that Yosuke would understand, but he could already hear the note of self-deprecating laughter, the light-hearted protest of _dude, don’t get deep on me, it’s just a hug_. So he said nothing, stopped thinking, and lost himself in something warm and familiar.

He was so deeply contented that he didn’t discourage Yosuke in the slightest when he ducked his head and pressed their lips together, slowly, carefully, intimately. It was the first kiss they’d shared since the last night in their apartment, and those had been clumsy and alcohol-fueled. Not at all like this. Souji was suddenly reminded that the one thing he’d wanted more than anything over the last few days had been Yosuke’s comfort, the one thing he couldn’t have, and he made a little noise in his throat as he felt himself being wrapped up in it now.

When Yosuke pulled back, Souji followed him; his hands came up out of the water, his fingers slipped into his hair, and he kissed him again, harder and deeper this time. His desperation was probably showing, but neither of them seemed to care very much. Their time in Inaba so far had been nothing but pain and sadness and isolation. He _needed_ this.

“Dude, someone’s gonna come down here…” Yosuke breathed against his lips.

“Don’t care…” Not now. In the daytime, yes, he would care. Fully rested and fully aware of himself and his surroundings, yes, he would care. On any other day than his uncle’s funeral, yes, he would care. But not now. Now his Shadow was awake and at work, and he remembered how _tired_ he was of bending to other people’s demands when they didn't give a damn about how he felt or what he needed. And now, he needed to forget.

Yosuke undoubtedly found it difficult to issue another warning with Souji’s tongue in his mouth, so he waited for that problem to rectify itself before trying again. “Yeah, _you_ don’t care, but Yukiko probably will when some asshole complains to her.”

Souji sighed, but had to concede the point, and he pulled away reluctantly. “You’re right. Sorry.”

The briefest of silences passed between them before Yosuke licked his lips and tilted his head toward the door leading back inside. “So… upstairs?”

“I don’t know… Nanako-chan’s in the room next to mine…”

“Well, we’re both gonna have to learn to be quiet if she’s gonna be living with us.”

Souji blinked. “I don’t remember telling you that…”

Yosuke had a habit of trying to kiss his way out of trouble when he was cornered. He would have found it irritating, if only he weren’t so damn good at it.

***

  
“I wanted to ask you something…”

Souji sat halfway up in his futon, realizing thickly that he was missing a chunk of time in his memory that meant he’d been asleep, if only for a few minutes. “Wha-?”

A pair of strong hands took him by the shoulders and pressed him back down into the warmth and comfort of the bedding. Yosuke knelt beside him, settling the covers back over his shoulders and gently brushing his bangs from his eyes. “…Never mind. It can wait.”

Souji made a half-asleep noise and turned his face into the cool touch of Yosuke’s hand. “You’re not leaving…?” he mumbled.

Sleep was already overtaking him again, and when Yosuke said, “If you want me to stay, I’ll stay,” it reached his ears like it was being filtered through cotton. He had the lightest impression of being kissed on the forehead, and then nothing.

He slept like a baby.  


 


	8. Chapter 8

Yosuke slept lightly that night when he slept at all, kept awake by the gnawing fear that someone at the inn would find an excuse to come to Souji’s door and discover that he wasn’t alone. He cared less these days about what anybody in town thought about him than he used to, but there was really nothing good that could possibly come of someone finding him and Souji tangled up in bed together. Honestly, he wasn’t completely opposed to letting their friends in on the secret someday, but _visual demonstration_ didn’t rank very highly on his list of preferred disclosure methods.

It was early morning. Souji was dead asleep and taking up most of the futon – he was a blanket hog to begin with, but he’d fallen asleep before Yosuke had crawled under the covers with him, which meant he was an intruder and had no right to complain about the lack of space. Yosuke tried not to move around too much, but his side hurt from laying on it funny, and he was split evenly between the comfort of staying in bed with Souji all day and the dull throb in his muscles that told him he needed to get up and stretch. Getting up won out in the end, in no small part because being pushed to the edge of the futon was not _at all_ comfortable.

Pushing him over to make room for himself was out of the question; Yosuke didn’t want to wake him. He had to have been exhausted last night, considering the exact point at which he’d fallen asleep…

  
_Souji’s sighs were low and soft next to his ear, audible only to them, but Yosuke still felt the need to shush him with a hiss and a finger against his lips. He complied, pressing his head back down into the pillow and his closing his mouth firmly so that the only sound that escaped him was the slow, steady breathing that came through his nose. Once Yosuke was satisfied with the volume of Souji’s responses, he continued on pressing gentle, attentive kisses down his neck and along the triangle of bare skin on his chest that showed just above the collar of the yukata. He took his time with getting the garment loosened and eventually open, and was distantly pleased that Souji seemed content to let him have his way without any complaints. In fact, Yosuke reflected, as he slid his tongue down the oddly relaxed muscles of Souji’s abdomen, he seemed content not to do much of anything at all._

_He looked up. “…Um.” No response. “Souji?”_

_Souji continued not to respond while Yosuke flushed with embarrassment, tied his yukata back on, and spread the futon cover over him. Trust him to pick _now _of all times to decide he could afford to catch a nap. Was he such a terrible lay that Souji would rather sleep than sleep with _him_? But as he tucked him into bed and noticed how peaceful and relaxed he finally looked after several long days of strain and suffering, he found he couldn’t stay frustrated with him. Souji spent way too much time caving to other people’s needs – he didn’t want to be just another item on his list of demands to satisfy._

_“Fine,” he chuckled, as he straightened his own clothing. “I’ll have to remember that one, next time it’s three in the morning and _you _want to get lucky.”_

_Once Souji was covered and settled, Yosuke hovered awkwardly for another few minutes, not really wanting to leave. He hadn’t done what he’d come here to do, after all._

_“Y’know, before I put the moves on you and you decided to fall asleep… I wanted to ask you something…”_

_Souji jerked awake this time at the sound of his voice, and Yosuke lost his nerve. He tucked him back in, and when it looked like he was asleep for good this time, crawled into the futon with him, closed his eyes, and pretended like they were home._

  
Souji didn’t stir, even when Yosuke slipped out of the futon, got dressed, and left the room quietly. He resolved to try and escape the inn before anyone else woke up, Yukiko in particular - he didn’t relish the thought of having to explain to her what he was doing there, and how exactly his first attempt to convince Souji to stay in Inaba had failed. He tiptoed down the hall and down the stairs, encountering no signs of life other than the tantalizing smells of breakfast being prepared in the kitchens, and made it all the way to the front steps outside before that attempt failed as well.

“Good morning,” said Nanako, from the bench beside the door. Yosuke jumped out of his skin.

“G-good morning, Nanako-chan!” he replied, hand pressed over his pounding heart in a manner that was only partly for show. “Whew, scared me! You’re, um… you’re up early.”

“Mm,” she nodded. She looked up at him long enough to be polite, and then refocused her attention on dragging her shoe over the cracks in the concrete. “You, too. Did you stay here last night?”

“W-who, me? Of course not.” Yosuke laughed, maybe a tad unconvincingly. Damn, but lying to Nanako made him feel like a dick. “I came to ask your brother something, but he’s still sleeping.”

“Ask him what?”

“Well…” Yosuke took a step closer, and she made room for him to sit down next to her on the stone bench. “Me and Yukiko were thinking that maybe... y’know, with everything that’s happened, maybe instead of you moving to the city with him, he should move back here.”

Nanako looked at him again, more closely this time, and with a little more spark in her eyes. “Oh,” she said, “Yeah, he said something like that last night. But, I dunno if he really means it…”

“What? Of course he does! What makes you think that?”

“I mean…” Nanako sighed as she struggled to put her thoughts into words. “I _know_ he’d move here if you asked, or if I asked, and I _want_ him to. But when I used to talk to him, when you guys moved away… he was happy. Really happy. He likes it in the city. I don’t want him to give that up for me…”

“He likes it wherever he is,” Yosuke assured her. “That’s just the way he works. And I promise you he’ll like it a lot more wherever _you_ are.”

Nanako cast her eyes downward, looking thoroughly unconvinced. Yosuke fidgeted, and tried desperately to think of something to say.

“H-hey, y’know, since he’s still catching up on his beauty sleep, why don’t you help me today instead?”

“Help you?” Nanako echoed, glancing back up at him curiously. “With what?”

“Well,” said Yosuke, slowly, trying to buy himself time to piece together his thoughts. “Um… he’s been busy and probably doesn’t even want to think about this right now, so how about we… go apartment hunting? It’ll probably be easier to convince him to move here if we find an awesome place first, right? We’ll narrow down a list for him. What do you say?”

That tiny spark that had come to life in Nanako’s eyes flared again as she sat up straighter. “You really think so?”

“Come on. You think he’d be able to say _no_ to a face like yours?” Yosuke pinched her cheek for good measure.

“…Okay,” she agreed, squirming away to hide a tiny smile. “But where do we start?”

  
***

  
They borrowed a copy of that morning’s newspaper from the inn and set off into town, poring over the classified section while they rode the bus. With such a small, relatively stable population, the housing market in Inaba wasn’t exactly hopping, but by the time they’d reached the shopping district they had a few potential places picked out. They wandered, got breakfast, and by the time they were done eating and discussing their plan of action, it was a reasonable enough hour to start calling landlords.

The first place was a bust, having been advertised as a two-bedroom, but in reality having only one bedroom and something that had to have been a closet just barely wide enough to roll out a futon. Nanako nodded in agreement when Yosuke pondered aloud whether it would be too small, and they moved on. The second place was decent, if a bit pricey; he knew he could depend on getting steady work at Junes, and Souji had a special talent for finding the weirdest odd jobs, but now they had Nanako to support, and it was probably just slightly beyond their means at present. It was really too bad; he liked it, and Nanako liked it, and it was better than the one they saw next by leaps and bounds. He had to bite down on his tongue to keep from laughing when they walked into a trashy basement apartment just north of the shopping district, and Nanako scrunched up her face like she’d been force-fed a lemon.

“So, what did you think?” Yosuke asked her, after they had vacated the premises as quickly and politely as possible.

“Um… it was okay,” she said.

He gave her a skeptical look. “’Okay’? Dude, I saw your face when we got in there. You don’t have to lie to make me feel better.”

She sighed with relief. “That was _awful_.”

“Oh, I don’t know. The rats would’ve made cute pets.”

“Eww…”

“All right, no rats. You’re cool with roaches though, right?”

“Eww!”

It quickly became apparent that Yosuke wasn’t the only one feeling paralyzed with inaction; as the day progressed and Nanako began voicing her opinion on their prospects without Yosuke having to coax it out of her, he started to see just a little more of the girl he and Souji had left behind when they’d moved away. Seeing Nanako now was like seeing her for the first time six years ago, painfully withdrawn and lonely. He remembered her being rather subdued back then, but Souji’s presence had drawn her out of her shell, and as they spent a little time together, Yosuke was relieved that she seemed to remember him as someone she used to be comfortable with, and her guard came down just a bit.

They had better luck after the initial disappointments that, strangely enough, began with running into Kanji on their way back to the bus stop.

“You’re lookin’ for a place? Why didn’t ya say so yesterday?” Kanji jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the boarded-up barber shop next to his own house. “Ma told me Omori-san next door’s been thinkin’ about renting out the place above his old shop. He lives across the flood plain with his daughter’s family now. Try askin’ him.”

So they did just that, and later that afternoon, the three of them met Omori in the shopping district’s north end. The front entrance of the barber shop was unusable, but a flight of stairs had been erected in the back to allow access to the apartment on the second floor, where the old man now led them.

It was a little run-down from lack of use, but not unsalvageable. Dust and cobwebs had settled into every corner, but it was open and well-lit, and Kanji assured Yosuke that both of those were desirable things. It was on the small side, but more cozy than cramped, and it had a weird little nook by one of the windows that Yosuke was easily able to identify as a spot to which Souji would gravitate with his books.

“I like it,” Nanako decided, as she peeked into the room that would be hers and evidently found it to her approval.

“And there aren’t any rats,” Yosuke pointed out.

“And you’re right next door to me,” added Kanji. “You guys ever get into trouble, you come knock on my door.”

“Yeah, we will,” said Yosuke, without thinking.

The responses were slow on Kanji’s part, and instantaneous on Nanako’s. She shot him a puzzled look from the doorway of the smaller bedroom, and tilted her head to one side. “Yosuke-nii, are you moving in with us too?”

_Oh shit._ Yosuke spluttered for a second before forcing a laugh to cover it up. “Uh, well … maybe?”

“Then… isn’t this place too small? It only has two bedrooms…”

“Didn’t even think of that,” said Kanji. “I just figured – y’know, your parents still live here, and if you’re comin’ back to Inaba and everything…”

_Damage control. Damage control!_ “I – I don’t really know what I’m doing yet, honestly,” he lied, backed up by another forced laugh. “It’s just – rent’s kind of hard to cover all by yourself, right? Me and Souji will work something out. Really, it’s not a big deal. Don’t worry about it.”

“So… you _are_ moving in with us?” Nanako prompted slowly.

Yosuke really, really didn’t like the curious look that Kanji gave him at that moment; he could feel his cheeks begin to redden and burn, and even to someone as typically clueless as Kanji, that reaction would only create more uncomfortable questions if he left the opportunity open. “We’ll, um – we’ll talk about it later, okay, Nanako-chan?”

Mercifully, the two of them let it drop. Kanji left, awkwardly citing a need to help his mother prepare dinner, and Yosuke followed suit with a promise to Omori that he’d be back soon to make a final decision.

Nanako shrank back into her protective bubble of silence the entire way back to the inn.

  
***

Despite the damper placed upon the end of the day by Kanji and Nanako’s almost-discovery, Yosuke resolved that he had done some good. He was confident, and almost looking forward to his task of convincing Souji to move to Inaba, now that he had the dual secret weapons of a nice apartment and Nanako’s _please-Big-Bro_ eyes firmly on his side.

All of that confidence fluttered away, leaving him weakened and hollow as they stepped into the lobby of the inn and ran smack into Souji – and his parents.

“Nanako-chan,” said Souji’s mother, as she extended her arms toward her. Nanako hesistated for a long moment by Yosuke’s side, but then silently stepped forward and allowed her aunt to wrap her up in a comforting hug.

“Hanamura-kun,” Souji’s father greeted him. Yosuke bowed stiffly in response.

“I don’t want to do this here,” said Souji. Yosuke shot him a worried glance as he straightened, recognizing that calm but _clipped_ tone of voice, the one he used when Yosuke left the milk out on the counter all night or forgot to pay the phone bill. “Can we go somewhere private?”

And Souji only asked _that_ when things were _really_ bad. Yosuke was sure his painfully dry gulp was audible to everyone present, but if they heard, no one gave any indication.

“All right,” said his mother. She put her arm around Nanako’s shoulders and steered her toward one of the sitting rooms off the lobby, and her husband followed.

Souji turned to him. “You, too.”

“Me?” Yosuke quailed, his voice rising in a decidedly unmanly fashion on the end of the word. “U-um, are you sure? I don’t want to-“

“Please.”

Yosuke groaned quietly, but gave in without another word and followed him into the sitting room with an ever-mounting sense of dread welling up in his guts. Being the last person to enter the room, he slid the door closed behind him before taking a seat next to Nanako and opposite Souji’s parents at the low table.

“What’s going on…?” Nanako asked, glancing nervously at her relatives. “Did something bad happen?”

“Not yet,” said Souji evenly.

“Souji, don’t be like that,” said his mother. “You’re barely out of university. You don’t have a job yet, you’re not married. How do you expect to take care of a child right now?”

“How do you?” Souji retorted. “Both of you are constantly moving for work. I don’t want you doing to Nanako-chan what you did to me.”

Yosuke felt deeply out of place, like he had walked in on a very private disagreement he really shouldn’t be overhearing. He shifted uncomfortably, and felt Nanako do the same next to him.

“We raised you just fine, thank you very much. This isn’t at all the same thing; Nanako-chan is going through a very difficult time.” Yosuke had never quite seen the familial connection between Souji and Dojima before, but at that moment he decided that his mother was definitely the missing link – all of Souji’s shrewd self-assurance and Dojima’s stern tendencies rolled into one. It was _terrifying_. “She needs guidance and security, and you’re not in a position to provide either. You’re a very responsible young man, Souji, but she needs something more than that right now.”

“She needs someone who will _be here_,” said Souji. “She needs _me_.”

“Your mother’s right,” said Souji’s father. “But even setting aside whether or not you could provide for her, according to Ryotarou’s will, we’re her legal guardians. It’s as simple as that.”

Souji’s hands tightened into fists on his knees. “You can’t do this…”

“Please, Souji, be reasonable,” said his mother firmly. “We all want what’s best for Nanako-chan.”

Yosuke couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “How is taking her away from her home supposed to help?”

The other four looked at him. Yosuke had the good grace to feel ashamed for speaking out of turn, but knew his point was valid enough for Souji to come to his aid. He was not disappointed.

“Yosuke’s right,” Souji insisted. “The last thing Nanako-chan needs is to have the _rest_ of her life uprooted. A completely new city and school – how is any of that _stable_ for her?”

“I’m sorry,” Souji’s father interrupted, looking rather confused. “Hanamura-kun, what exactly are you doing here, again?”

Yosuke froze up under the keen attention of Souji’s parents, feeling atrociously stupid all of a sudden. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, desperately grasping for words that wouldn’t come, but Souji interjected on his behalf and spared him the embarrassment of whatever feeble excuse he would have come up with himself.

“I asked him to stay. Yosuke’s going to be living with me – with _us_,” Souji corrected himself pointedly, “when I move here to take care of Nanako-chan. This is his business, too.”

Silence. Dread. Yosuke kept his eyes fixed on the center of the table and fervently wished he could _die_, or at least sink clear into the rug and never be seen again. Being a rug wouldn’t be so bad. Sure, people would walk all over him, but damn if that didn’t sound about a million times more enjoyable than listening to your boyfriend all but out you in front of his entire family.

“Souji,” his mother sighed, raising a hand to her forehead as if attempting to stave off a headache. “Listen to yourself. You can’t possibly think this is a good idea.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Souji countered. “You’re absolutely right. I’m a very responsible young man, barely out of university, no job, not married – I have my entire life ahead of me. On the other hand, you’re both rather tied up with your work right now. Tell me - did you plan on taking Nanako-chan to America with you?”

His parents exchanged a glance, and Yosuke allowed himself to feel hopeful for just an instant. It was enough for him to spot it as a crack in their defense, and if it was visible to _him_, then he was sure that Souji was already on the offensive and prepared to tear it down.

“You might be her legal guardians, but you can’t expect to be able to look after her with your current responsibilities. At least, not right now. You’ll be busy overseas for another five months, right?”

“What are you suggesting?” Souji’s mother asked.

Souji straightened, tilted up his chin, and apparently tapped some inner reservoir of calm that Yosuke could only dream of possessing. “Let us take care of her while you’re finishing your work. If you come back and still think it’s a bad idea, then you can take her to the city with you. It’ll be the end of the summer, start of a new term – she can transfer to a new school easily enough then. But _please_, please give us a chance. This is too important not to.”

The Setas exchanged another look, but this time, Yosuke didn’t dare guess at what it might mean.

“You two,” Souji’s mother gestured at Yosuke and Nanako. “Wait outside, please.”

Yosuke caught Souji’s gaze for a moment, but the other man just nodded. Wordlessly, the two of them stood from the table and filed out of the room.

“I don’t want to move,” Nanako said in a rush as soon as the door slid closed between them and the Seta family. “I don’t want to leave school and all my friends. Dad would’ve wanted Big Bro to take care of me, I _know_ he would have!”

“It’s okay,” Yosuke assured her. “Your Big Bro’s got this one under control. I think.”

Neither of them was above eavesdropping, but the voices on the other side of the sliding door were muted, inaudible, so they quickly gave up and went outside to wait. They sat down on the stone bench together, like they had that morning, and watched the sun on its slow descent toward the horizon in silence. When Nanako started shivering - from exhaustion or anxiety or just from the late afternoon cold - Yosuke put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close.

Souji emerged from the inn fifteen minutes later, and sat down on the other side of Nanako before speaking.

“They said yes,” he announced. “At least until they’re back from America. Maybe longer, depending.”

“Awesome,” Yosuke sighed, and grinned. “Knew you had them with that stuff about them being gone away for work.”

“Really?” Nanako asked, eyes wide. “Big Bro, you’re going to stay?”

Souji nodded.

“We’re going to live in Inaba?”

“Yep.”

“And – is Yosuke-nii…?”

Yosuke and Souji locked eyes above Nanako’s head. They weren’t nearly as good at that couple-telepathy that Souji’s parents seemed to have mastered, so Yosuke just shrugged carelessly to communicate his feelings on the matter. _S’up to you._

“I couldn’t do it without him,” Souji said, with a broad smile that made Yosuke scoff and mutter something under his breath about Souji saying weird things.

“Yosuke-nii, your face is all red…”

“It – it’s cold out, okay?! Geez.”

When the sun finally set and the cold became unbearable, Nanako left them for the hot springs, but not before giving each of them a hug and tiny words of thanks. After she had gone, Souji waited for the dark to deepen, and made absolutely sure they were alone before leaning over and pressing a quick, chaste kiss against Yosuke’s lips.

“What was that for?” he asked, nervously double-checking the surrounding area for anyone who might have seen.

“I need a reason?”

“You _should_. Dude, you almost outed us in front of your parents. I thought I was gonna have a heart attack! You owe me a lot more than a kiss.”

“So… was that better or worse than falling asleep on you last night?”

“Dude, not even comparable…”

“Hmm," Souji murmured with a smile. "Your face is all red…”

"It's _cold_," Yosuke huffed, but even he had to admit that at that moment, with Souji smiling at him and the future looking a little brigher than it had just that morning, he was nowhere near as cold as he ought to have been.


	9. Chapter 9

_“Can I come, too? I want to see your place, big bro.”_

_“No!” said Souji and Yosuke, quickly and perfectly in unison. They glanced awkwardly at each other, and then away, and then Yosuke suddenly discovered that one of his shoelaces was badly tied and demanded his immediate attention. “Um, there’s just a lot of work that needs doing here, Nanako-chan,” Souji explained. “We’ll be coming back with all our stuff, so the apartment has to be cleaned up and ready by the time we get back.”_

_“Oh – right. Okay,” she agreed, and that, thankfully, was the end of it._

_For the time being._

 

***

 

“How long can we keep dodging these bullets, man?” Yosuke sealed up the box he’d been working on with wide brown packing tape, and tore the strip off with his teeth. Souji would have asked where the scissors went, if he didn’t already know the answer was _I dunno. One of those boxes maybe?_

“I don’t know,” Souji said distractedly, climbing up onto a precariously balanced box to reach the top shelf of their bedroom closet, where he found a lot of dust, some old clothes, and a book that was due back in the library in another week. “Huh. That’s where that went… Sorry, what are we talking about?”

“Us,” said Yosuke. “And people finding out.”

“Oh. Yeah. I dunno…”

“_Dude_,” said Yosuke, clearly exasperated by his lack of concern on the matter. “Don’t you care? I mean, yeah, you’re good at talking your way out of things, but I suck at it. You should have seen me when Nanako-chan asked why our place only has two bedrooms. I totally choked.”

“Well, you won’t have to worry about it for much longer,” said Souji grimly, tossing their rediscovered belongings down onto the floor for imminent packing. “We’re going to have to tell her when we get back. Unless you want to sleep on the couch tonight.”

“Like hell. I bought that bed - _you_ sleep on the couch.” Yosuke chuckled, but it came out sounding forced and hollow, even to Souji. “Seriously though, I’m… not really looking forward to that part.”

“It’s Nanako-chan. She won’t care.”

“I dunno, dude, she’s been kind of weird ever since we got there…”

“Her father’s dead, Yosuke.”

“It’s not _that_.” Yosuke used his foot to shove the box into the corner with the others, and then sat down on the edge of the bed. Souji felt like reminding him that there was still a lot of work to be done, but he had to admit that he was interested in what Yosuke had to say about Nanako, in spite of himself. “It’s like she’s totally okay one minute, but then something I do or say sets her off and she just _ignores_ me. Are you getting that at all from her?”

“No, but I don’t run my mouth like you do either. What makes her ignore you?”

Yosuke shrugged helplessly, and heaved a weary sigh. “I dunno… Sometimes I don’t even _do_ anything. She just looks at me and then… Okay, like, the other day when we went out looking at apartments, for example. When I let it slip that I might be moving in with you, she got all quiet and didn’t say another word to me until we ran into you and your parents. But she was fine all day before that. I dunno, man, I don’t think she likes me all that much…”

Souji wasn’t sure what to make of that. Nanako _did_ like Yosuke, he knew that much – or at least, she _used_ to. It was a rare occasion that one of her phone calls over the last few years didn’t end with an over-the-phone kiss for him that Souji was only too happy to deliver in person – but now that he thought about it, those instances had definitely become less frequent as she grew older. “Well, Nanako-chan’s growing up. Maybe she’s jealous of you.”

Yosuke laughed outright at that, before realizing that Souji wasn’t joking. “What, are you serious? Why would she be jealous of _me_?”

“You monopolize my time. You came to live with me in the city, so maybe I don’t need to miss Inaba as much anymore.” Souji hesitated. “Also, when she was younger she wanted to marry me.”

Yosuke snorted. “Yeah, her and every other girl in town.”

“I’m serious – she told me that. Maybe she doesn’t know about us yet, but she’s a bright girl. She probably knows something’s up, or at the very least senses you might be competition for my attention.”

“Never thought about it like that,” said Yosuke, frowning thoughtfully. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. With her dad gone and everything she probably wants more attention from you than normal…”

Souji decided to leave it at that, and got back to work. He’d explained it as nonchalantly as possible to Yosuke, but privately he wondered if his parents had been right – if he really was capable of providing the kind of care and attention Nanako needed right now. Being there for her when her father was busy was one thing; being there _all the time_ was something else.

And then there was Yosuke. No matter what she called him, he wasn’t even _related_ to Nanako, and as well as he knew him, Souji couldn’t begin to guess at how Yosuke was feeling about their impending responsibilities. _Their_ responsibilities, he reminded himself, the first real ones that extended beyond each other and their life together in the city. If he doubted his own readiness for that leap, what did Yosuke think about it?

“Hey. You’ve got that – forehead thing going on,” Yosuke said, waving a hand near his face to illustrate his point. “Something up?”

Souji came back to earth, smiled, and shook his head. “Nah, it’s nothing.”

Yosuke held out the hand he’d been waving, inviting him to take it, and Souji did. He sat with him on the edge of the bed, despite his earlier thoughts regarding how much work was left to be done, and despite a sneaking suspicion that a brief break would probably lead to other things, what with this being their last night alone together for the foreseeable future.

“I know your folks probably have you freaked out, but seriously, dude. Don’t even worry for a second, all right? We’ve got this. How many kids can say their big brothers dove headfirst into a TV to rescue them, huh? I mean, how much harder can this be?”

“A lot,” replied Souji with a short laugh. “It’s not her big brothers she’s missing.”

Yosuke didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. A minute later, he slipped his arm around Souji’s waist and bumped their foreheads together, but nothing more, and when they eventually did fall backwards onto the bed, it was to doze off together in comfortable silence.

 

  
***   


 

They awoke well before dawn to finish packing and cleaning, and then they were on the road before noon, everything they owned packed up tight in a tiny moving van that drove like a slightly less safe version of a rickety mine cart. It was a miserable ride – it was noisy, everything _jolted_ and _vibrated_, and Yosuke had to ask him to pull over twice so he could crouch low to the gravel on the side of the road and try not to be sick. But they were in Inaba before long, pulling up in front of their new home in the shopping district later that evening.

“Sensei! Yosuke!” Teddie greeted them at the door with an ear-to-ear grin and a bright pink kerchief wrapped around his head. “Your place is _filthy_, so we’re cleaning!”

“Nice to see you too, you dumb bear,” Yosuke grumbled, his face still drawn and grey from the trip. “Ugh, might as well get this over with. Yo, Kanji – give us a hand with the van?”

_We_ turned out to be everyone from their old gang, with the exception of Naoto. “She’s still at the station,” said Chie, taking a brief break from scrubbing the inside of the refrigerator long enough to talk to him. Souji was amused to note that the kerchief theme extended to everyone present – even Kanji, he saw, as he hurried past to join Yosuke at the door. “At least, she was when I left. She’s pretty serious about figuring out what happened to…” Chie lowered her voice. “You know…”

“Yeah… I should probably talk to her soon about that.” Souji glanced around. “Where are my parents? Did they leave already?”

“Ahh… yeah. It’s a long drive to the airport, so they had to leave early. They said to tell you that they’d call when they got to America.”

Chie looked sheepish, perhaps sensing his underlying anger at them, no matter how hard he tried to suppress it. But he’d really rather not think about that right now. “Where’s Nanako-chan?”

“In her room. She had a busy day, helping out here and stuff. I think she tired herself out, poor thing.”

Souji wandered to the smaller of the two bedrooms, and hovered outside the door for a moment until he was sure he didn’t hear any movement inside. Cracking the door open just slightly, he peeked in and saw Nanako curled up in a futon in the otherwise empty room, sleeping soundly.

“I brought you some spare futons from the inn,” said Yukiko, suddenly at his shoulder. “Just until you can get your own.”

“Thanks,” said Souji, as he shut the door again as quietly as possible. “You didn’t have to –“

“Oh, it’s not just me!” she protested as they moved back to the kitchen area. “E-everyone brought things, even some people from town. There’s some food, some clothes for Nanako-chan… Chie still had her old middle-school uniform hanging around, so she gave that to her, too.”

“Thanks, guys. We really appreciate it.”

“Anything to help Sensei and Nana-chan!” Teddie declared, and he went back to chasing away a spider that had settled in a corner of the ceiling.

“Your place is so cute,” Rise cooed, linking her arms around one of Souji’s. “And so close to my grandmother’s, too! Do you think I could I stay with you when I come back to visit sometimes?”

She batted her lashes flirtatiously, and Souji offered a friendly, but otherwise neutral confirmation that yes, she probably could, and it would probably make Nanako happy. In his peripheral vision, he saw Yosuke shift his weight back and forth on his feet and look away.

“C’mon, we doin’ this or not?” Kanji urged him. Souji apologized, and slipped off to help Kanji and Yosuke unload their belongings from the van.

 

  
***   


 

Teddie took his leave earlier than the others so he could return to his world before Junes closed for the night, but it was well past midnight by the time everyone else went home. Souji eyed the mountain of boxes that filled their small living room, and frowned. Funny how moving made you feel like you had so little and yet so _much_ stuff all at the same time. There was nothing in the boxes that couldn’t stay there until morning, however, so he decided to give in to his encroaching exhaustion and prepare for bed before he simply fell asleep on his feet.

Yosuke was already sprawled out on the bed, fully dressed, glasses still perched on his nose, albeit sitting slightly askew. Souji smiled as he sat down on the edge closest to him, removing his glasses and placing them carefully on the nightstand.

“Mmn,” Yosuke protested without opening his eyes. “I’m awake.”

“You should fix that. It’s late. How are you feeling?”

“Better. Tired. Don’t usually get motion sick, but that ride was hellish. You drop off that deathtrap yet?”

“In the morning. You’re starting work tomorrow, right? I’ll drop you off and then bring it back.”

“Awesome,” Yosuke mumbled, reaching over to pat the empty side of the bed. “Hurry up. S’hard to sleep when you’re not here…” His eyes remained closed, but he pulled a face at his own words nonetheless. “Ugh, that was girly, wasn’t it? I just mean – I guess I got used to you sleeping in the middle of the bed and stealing all the blankets or something, and –“

Souji silenced him with a kiss. Yosuke seemed okay with that.

“Hmm,” he murmured thoughtfully, and he opened his eyes at last as Souji drew back. “Careful with that, partner. We’re not…”

Souji was confused by the unfinished sentence for only a brief moment, before he saw Yosuke’s eyes open _wide_, saw him struggle to sit up, to get _away_, and he already knew with a sick flash of dread what he would find when he turned around.

“I – I didn’t mean to…” Nanako was already turning around in their bedroom doorway, her face flushed red, excuses tumbling out from behind the hands over her mouth faster than she could put words to them. “I – I had a bad dream and – I was going to get some water, so…”

“Nanako-chan, it’s not…” Souji trailed off, with no ideas on how to finish that thought. _It’s not_ what? Not what it looked like? Starting this off by insulting her intelligence would be a poor way to go, and there was no point in trying to lie about it in any case. Next to him, Yosuke had become a statue, or a ‘possum – like if he pretended to be dead, she wouldn’t _see_ him there. Souji sighed, stood up from the bed, and met her in the doorway. “Come on,” he said gently. “Let’s talk.”

The two of them settled around the kitchen table, Souji’s hands folded into themselves, Nanako’s around a glass of water that she wasn’t drinking. She kept her eyes fixed on the glass, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, her cheeks still burning brightly, and didn’t look up until Souji spoke again.

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. We were going to; we weren’t going to keep it a secret.”

“It’s okay…” she said softly, looking small and hunched and for all the world like she would rather be anywhere else than sitting in that chair.

“It doesn’t sound like it is… You can be honest with me, Nanako-chan. Do you disapprove?”

“No,” she said, surprisingly emphatically, with a firm shake of her head. “Really, big bro, I don’t. I – I love you, and I love Yosuke-nii. And I… kind of already thought that maybe he loved you, too, so… Really, it’s okay…”

“But…?”

She paused, ran her thumbs nervously over her glass before pressing on. “But… people at school say bad things about… Big bro, I don’t want them to say those things about you and Yosuke-nii…”

He reached across the table then, and took her hands in his. They were bigger now – still small-boned and slender, but they didn’t fit in his palms like they used to. “I know, Nanako-chan. And I don’t want you to have to hear things like that. So we’re going to keep it a secret for now, okay? Just us three.”

“Just us?” she echoed quietly. “So Teddie and Yukiko-san and –“ her expression turned incredulous for a moment “-Rise-chan… no one else knows?”

From the edge of the kitchen, Yosuke chuckled, drawing their attention. “Now there’s a reason not to tell anybody. I don’t think I want to be known as the dude who made Risette cry.”

“Technically, I’d be the one who made her cry,” Souji corrected him. “You’d be the one she’d post embarrassing photos of all over the internet.”

“Yeah… let’s not rush things.”

That even drew a small smile out of Nanako, to his immense relief. “Honestly, I’m… happy for you, big bro. That you have someone who loves you a whole lot like that. It must be nice…”

“Hey, c’mon, kiddo,” said Yosuke, slinking across the room to kneel next to her chair and draw her into a tight hug. “You already know what that’s like, don’t you? You’ve got us.”

That moment struck Souji for two reasons, one of which was immediately apparent, and one of which didn’t occur to him until he woke again in the middle of the night. At the time, watching them across the table and feeling like this was _right_, like this was the beginning of something he’d longed for without really being able to put a name to it, he’d been surprised by the simple earnestness and deep affection he could sense in Yosuke’s words. It made him feel, despite this strange arrangement and these unfamiliar walls, that this was _home_.

The other thing to surprise him, he realized as he lay awake in bed later on, was that Nanako’s smile at that moment had been the saddest thing he’d ever seen.

  


  
***   


  
Souji and Nanako dropped Yosuke off at work the next morning, as promised (although Yosuke practically had to be coaxed back into the passenger seat after yesterday’s ordeal), and then headed to MOEL to refuel the moving van before returning it to the rental agency. They had a busy day of unpacking and organizing ahead of them, but Souji was looking forward to it, now that the immediate worry of telling Nanako their secret had been dealt with, however unexpectedly.

“Yosuke-nii doesn’t like car rides, huh?” Nanako asked, as they pulled up next to one of the pumps and waited for an attendant to greet them. “Just like you, big bro.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t remember? When you first moved to Inaba. When…” She stumbled. “When Dad and I picked you up at the station. We stopped here. You were carsick.”

“Oh yeah,” said Souji, thoughtfully, watching the attendant approach the van in his side-view mirror. “Yeah, I remember that, kind of. I’m surprised you do – that was a long time ago.”

“Welcome to MOEL. What can I do for you today?” asked the attendant, a middle-aged man with dark hair and a friendly, likeable face.

“Just fill the tank, please. Thanks.” Souji continued to watch him in the mirror, absently, half in reality, half in the hazy memory of the day he had arrived in Inaba six years earlier. Something tugged at his mind as he felt his way around that memory, a sort of faint _snag_ at first that grew until he couldn’t ignore it any longer. “Hey, Nanako-chan. Whatever happened to that high school guy who worked here? Tall, kind of greyish hair… The one we met when we stopped here that time.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I used to see him in town sometimes, a while ago, but he hasn’t been around in years. He must have moved away. A lot of people do.”

“Yeah,” said Souji. “I guess so.” And he paid it no more mind.  



	10. Chapter 10

_May 2017_

  
Yosuke was dismayed when he realized that, despite it being burnt to cinders and no longer a physical presence in any of their lives, the sense of being an outsider he’d once felt at the Dojima residence was already carrying over to the Dojima-Seta-Hanamura residence too.

It wasn’t anybody’s fault, and that just made it worse. Yosuke knew how much time Dojima had spent away from home and at work, and knew that Souji and Nanako had grown extremely close as a result of all the taking care of her he’d done. But that didn’t stop him from feeling like some kind of wall stood between himself and the cousins, just like it had during the funeral – a barrier that neatly separated him from the family he was _supposed_ to be a part of, but wasn’t quite.

“It’s hard right now,” Souji told him, in that _everything will work out, so trust me_ voice that always made him feel like he still had so much growing up to do. “You and I living together is one thing, but it’s different with Nanako-chan here. It’s just going to take time for us to get used to each other.”

Sometimes he wondered irrationally if some kind of spirit of the house had followed them here and was jinxing him. The clothes Nanako had been wearing when she escaped the fire still smelled like smoke – acrid smoke from the fire, and a different, thinner kind of smoke, the kind Yosuke’s memory associated with Dojima’s cigarettes. The smell didn’t go away, despite repeated washings. It didn’t seem like there was any escaping the spectre of that place.

There were ups and downs, of course – high points where he felt like family and low points where he felt more like an awkward guest in someone else’s house. There were things he just didn’t _understand_ yet, frustrating, invisible hurdles he kept tripping himself up on whenever he tried to do anything. The worst of it came the day he’d made coffee in the morning and offered some to Nanako, who took the mug from him with trembling hands and then – ceramic fragments and hot caffeinated beverage, all over the kitchen floor, and neither was as shocking as seeing her suddenly burst into tears. After Souji explained the significance of what he’d done, he’d been so deeply ashamed, like he should have _known_ better, even though Souji assured him there was no way he could have.

Souji wouldn’t have made that mistake. He knew all the things that would trigger memories of Dojima, and was careful to avoid each and every one, while Yosuke seemed to stumble and crash into them with all of his typical grace.

But it wasn’t all bad. Work at Junes was hectic as usual, but his previous experience and his work toward a business degree hadn’t been for nothing, and his parents had seen fit to let him try out a position as a department manager (which included electronics, he was somewhat amused to discover). He still had to deal with complaining customers day after day, but now he actually had the power to do something about them, unlike the clerks who worked under him. Some part of him was unable to completely let go of the feeling that this couldn’t possibly last, that if anyone could find a way to trip up and fail when things were going so well, it would be him.

But there were people depending on him _not_ to fail. And that made him at least want to try.  


  


***

Nanako began her second year of middle school in April, and with this new beginning came a respite from the loneliness that Souji and Yosuke’s presence hadn’t entirely been able to erase. Being able to go to school and focus on something concrete seemed to keep her mind from wandering to dark places too often, and she was observably happier now that she was seeing her school friends on a more regular basis. After her second day back at school, she informed them with a faint hint of pride that everyone was asking about the person taking care of her, this mysterious older brother who moved to Inaba from the city.

“Oh, but don’t worry, big bro,” she assured him, “I won’t tell them about _that_.”

But being the inquisitive teenage girl she was, Nanako couldn’t seem to suppress her own curiosity about “that”. Having grown used to hiding their relationship, it was… _different_ to be affectionate with Souji when Nanako was around. Not that either of them were into big displays of affection to begin with, but even a goodbye kiss as Yosuke left for work in the mornings made him turn a little red when he noticed that Nanako was watching attentively as she ate her breakfast at the table. And when the three of them curled up on the couch together to watch quiz shows on TV after dinner, Yosuke would catch her stealing curious glances at them, and at Souji’s arm wrapped around his shoulders. Before long, Yosuke found himself fielding questions that he wasn’t sure he knew how to answer.

“Yosuke-nii – you love big bro, right?”

They were in the kitchen together, cooking dinner – or rather, Nanako was cooking dinner while Yosuke did menial tasks to help out, much like he did with Souji. He paused in the middle of chopping vegetables when the question came, and then slowly resumed as he answered, a little warily, “Y-yeah. I do.”

Nanako stirred a pot on the stove in silence for a moment, before continuing. “How did you… know?”

_Oh boy_. Yep, it was spring, and about the right time for middle school romances to start blossoming like so many beautiful, delicate, dead-by-summer flowers. Yosuke could only pray that someone had already handled “the talk” with her, or he might just die on the spot. “Uh… well, it’s – it’s kind of hard to explain,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “It didn’t all happen at once, you know? I don’t think I knew right away.”

“But you did know eventually…”

Damn. So much for taking the easy way out by being vague. “Yeah, I did. I, um… Well, I guess it started when I realized that he was important to me. Y’know, caring what he thought about me, always wanting to be around him – things like that.”

“And… that’s love?”

“Well – no, that’s not… argh, I suck at explaining this stuff,” he groaned. “Love’s… it’s complicated! It’s a whole bunch of different feelings all wound up together like… like I want to make him happy, even when I’m not, or protect him, even if it hurts. I want to put him before myself; make him first in my life. Do you get what I mean?”

“I think so,” said Nanako.

Yosuke sighed in relief, and then elbowed her shoulder with a playful grin stretched across his face. “So why the questions, anyway? Is there a lucky guy at school we don’t know about?”

The blush that seemed to cover her head to toe was all the confirmation he needed. “I- I don’t know,” she mumbled, staring intently into the stew as if she were holding a conversation with it instead of Yosuke. “I thought so, but hearing you describe it like that… maybe it’s not like that at all.”

“Well, you’re still young. And it’s probably different for everybody, so...”

“What was your first kiss like? With big bro.”

Yosuke sputtered, but was saved the indignity of having to answer by the sound of the door opening and Souji’s voice calling out to announce his presence.

“Welcome back,” said Yosuke, jumping on the distraction and the welcome change of topic it offered. “How’d it go?”

Souji kicked off his shoes at the door and stepped up into the kitchen, already reaching up to loosen his tie and undo the topmost button of his dress shirt. “Pretty good. I don’t expect a lot of work right away, but the principal figures that’ll change after the midterms come back and the third-years start panicking about getting into university. So part-time, at least. But Yasogami wants more of its students to get acceptances to look good, and lots of them can’t afford cram school, so I guess I’m what they get instead.”

“Lucky them,” Yosuke teased. “Dude, you know way too much stuff about _everything_ not to put it to use somehow.”

Souji smiled and shrugged. “So what have you two been up to?”

Yosuke opened his mouth to inform him of their adventures in stew-making (he was supposed to be learning how to do it himself, but he’d long since lost track of what was going on), but Nanako cut him off before he could utter a word. “Yosuke-nii was about to tell me about your and his first kiss.”

“Oh really?” Souji’s pleasant smile twisted into a grin as he turned his gaze toward Yosuke, who let out a long whine in protest.

“Partner, no, _please_. It’s so stupid…”

“_Well_ then, let me tell you,” Souji began theatrically, ignoring Yosuke outright even as he crossed the room to stand next to him. Nanako was glancing between the two of them with keen interest. “It was the dead of winter, right after a bad snowstorm. Very cold, snow and ice still all over the roads and sidewalks. We were walking back to our place from a movie, and when we were standing on the corner waiting for the light to change, I decided to go for it. Except, this wasn’t long after we’d decided to try dating, so Yosuke wasn’t quite ready for it.”

“I can’t believe you’re telling her this…” Yosuke groaned, busying himself with chopping vegetables again to try and ignore the story he remembered painfully well.

“What did he do?” Nanako asked, as heedless of Yosuke’s discomfort as her cousin.

“He freaked out and pushed me away, but a little too hard for all the ice on the ground, and… I slipped and fell and broke my nose on the sidewalk.”

The kitchen was utterly silent for a long moment, except for the sound of Yosuke chopping furiously. Then Nanako’s hand moved, and barely covered her mouth in time to catch the first burst of laughter bubbling over. Souji quickly joined her, and with the two of them apparently channeling Yukiko, it didn’t take long for Yosuke to be dragged out of his petulant sulk as well.

“I’m sorry,” Nanako giggled. “That wasn’t funny…”

“Well, not at the time, no,” said Souji with a fond smile. “But it’s nice to look back now and laugh. Come to think of it, we haven’t been able to tell anyone that story at all, have we?”

“Yeah, that’s a crying shame,” Yosuke said sarcastically, but he had to admit he was in a far better mood now than he had been when Souji had started telling it. And even though it had been short-lived, he was relieved to see Nanako laugh at something again.

“So, the lesson here,” Souji concluded, patting Yosuke on the shoulders, “is that if someone tries to steal your first kiss, break his nose. And if you can’t do it, Yosuke-nii’s got experience in that field, so he’ll do it for you.”

Yosuke swatted Souji away in mock annoyance, and Nanako turned back to the pot on the stove, smiling faintly.

  


***

All things considered, Yosuke had to admit that his new life was getting off to a decent start. Souji and Nanako’s easy familiarity still made him feel a little awkward, but he knew Souji was right – that would just take time. He supposed he should be happy that Nanako was at least warming up to him again, so really, things were about as perfect as he could have possibly hoped.

Except for one thing.

“It’s just – I’m working a lot more day shifts than I thought I’d be, and that’s when Nanako-chan’s at school, so… we don’t really get a lot of time to…” Yosuke blew out a breath into his cell phone and lowered his voice, despite being alone in the Junes staff room. “You know…”

“I don’t think I’d feel right doing _that_ while she’s at home...”

“Yeah, I know. I’m not saying I would either. It’s just frustrating sometimes.”

“Well…” said Souji slowly. Yosuke could practically hear the wheels turning from over the phone. “You free for lunch?”

It was usually a ten-minute bike ride between their apartment and Junes. Yosuke made it in five. Souji was there to greet him in the kitchen with an amused smile and a raised eyebrow when he burst through the door.

“That was fast,” he noted dryly.

“No time for talking,” Yosuke panted, breathless in a manner that was only partly related to his bike race across the flood plain. He grabbed Souji by the collar of his shirt, shoved him up against the refrigerator, and kissed him hard and desperately on the mouth. There was none of that sweetness between them that Nanako occasionally got to witness; this was all teeth and tongue, hands grasping at hair and clothing and skin. Souji made a surprisingly high, needy little sound in his throat, the first confirmation he’d had in _weeks_ that his boyfriend was as sexually frustrated as he was, and his answering groan sounded almost obscene in comparison. Fingers worked frantically at buttons and belts, and when Yosuke’s mouth found that spot on Souji’s neck where he could feel the pulse beating hard and fast beneath the skin, he bit down, and the shuddering gasp that left Souji’s lips sent a white-hot bolt of excitement all the way through him.

God, this was insane. They’d gone this long – and longer – without sex before, but there was really no aphrodisiac like not being able to just have it whenever they wanted. What had been so _available_ before had suddenly become a precious commodity, and if that meant it felt like _this_ when it did happen, Yosuke began to think that maybe he wouldn’t mind so much…

The phone rang. When Souji turned his head toward it automatically, Yosuke grabbed his face in his hands and kissed him again, a little more roughly than he’d meant to if Souji’s quick gasp of pain was any indication. By way of apology – and to keep the focus of his attention on him instead of the damn phone – Yosuke anchored his hands on Souji’s hips and ground _hard_ against him, causing Souji to snap his head back against the refrigerator and moan senselessly. He did this until the phone stopped ringing, until the jarring, unwelcome noise was replaced by Souji’s voice, pleading, begging –

Yosuke grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled him to the bedroom, all but throwing him down onto the bed when they got there. He climbed on top of him, held him down and kissed him hard along his jaw and neck and chest while he panted and writhed against the sheets. Souji kind of had a thing for this. Yosuke had never figured out if it was just for _him_, on the rare occasions when he got all aggressive like this, or if it was a more general desire to be dominated, but he didn’t think it mattered all that much; either way, it was so fucking hot he could have come right then and there just watching him.

“Yosuke,” Souji gasped, as he squirmed and thrust his hips up in an effort to meet his. “God, Yosuke, _please_-“

Souji’s cell phone rang in the pocket of his jeans, and this time, both of them paused.

“Expecting a call?” Yosuke asked, and his voice felt about as tight as his pants, for exactly same reason.

Souji shook his head.

“Good.” Yosuke reached into Souji’s pocket and pulled the phone free, tossing it carelessly into the laundry basket where the clothes muffled the ringing. “You can call them back when I’m done with you.”

Aside from not getting anything to eat, it was easily the best lunch break Yosuke had ever had.

 

***

“Fuck…”

“Mmm,” Yosuke agreed, sleepily. What he wouldn’t give to take the rest of the day off and stay in bed all afternoon…

“Not that – the phone call.” Souji was already out of bed and into his pants, standing over the laundry basket with his phone open in his hand. “It was Nanako-chan.”

Yosuke propped himself up on his elbows, feeling a sharp, immediate stab of guilt in his chest. “Oh, shit…”

Souji already had the phone to his ear to call her back. After a few seconds, she picked up – relieving at first, until Yosuke remembered that she should have been in class. “Nanako-chan? Did you try to call? Sorry, I…” It only got worse from there, from what he could tell from Souji’s side of the conversation. “What’s wrong? … What happened? … Where are you? … Okay. Stay there, I’ll come get you. I’ll be there right away.”

“Dude,” Yosuke said uneasily as he slid out of bed and started looking for his clothes, “did something happen?”

“There was a fire,” said Souji, shoving his phone back into his pocket and joining Yosuke in a search for his shirt. “At Nanako’s school. She got scared, and ran – fuck, both of those calls must have been from her, I _knew_ I should have answered them –“

That creeping sense of guilt moved lower, curled up and made a comfortable little nest for itself in Yosuke’s stomach. “I’m… I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking… Is she okay?”

“She’s not hurt. She’s at the Samegawa. You go back to work, I’ll go down there and get her.”

Yosuke hurried to get into his clothes so he could catch Souji as he stalked out of the room. “Wait, Souji – it’s on my way, I’ll give you a ride.”

Despite the fact that they were getting too old to be able to ride double on Yosuke’s bike, at least not without attracting odd stares from people they passed on the street, Souji didn’t hesitate to accept the offer, and in no time they were racing toward the flood plain road. When they didn’t find Nanako at the riverbed, Souji cursed and whipped out his phone.

“Wait, I see her,” said Yosuke, kicking off again and pedaling further up the road until they reached the gazebo.

“Nanako-chan!” Souji called out, barely waiting for Yosuke to stop the bike again before dismounting.

She raised her head at the sound of her name, and when she saw the two of them there together, there was no mistaking the raw look of _hurt_ that flickered across her tired, tear-streaked face.

“You’re going to be late,” Souji said to him over his shoulder as he walked away. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her. We’ll see you tonight.”

“Yeah…” said Yosuke awkwardly. Souji wasn’t wrong, but he couldn’t help but feel that once again, he’d run smack up against that invisible wall, that line that he wasn’t allowed to cross just yet. “I… okay.”

He watched Souji sit down next to Nanako on the gazebo bench, and then hurriedly turned away to continue on towards Junes. But all afternoon, all he could think about was that look on Nanako’s face, the painful realization that Souji had been with _him_ when she needed him, and what had started off as the perfect lunch break left a sour, disgusting feeling in his stomach for the rest of the day.  



	11. Chapter 11

Souji couldn’t think of himself as a father, no matter how hard he tried.

To be fair, he wasn’t trying very hard – to his mind, Nanako already _had_ a father, and he had no business attempting to replace him. Regardless of the fact that he was now one of her guardians, and that he performed the function of _father_ in every respect and to the best of his capabilities, it was still much too soon for him to be able to think of himself as anything other than what he had always been.

“Just as well,” Yosuke had told him with a nervous laugh when he’d voiced this thought. “Can you imagine us with kids? We’d mess ‘em up way too much, man. But really, how different is this from what we’ve always done? We’ve got this big brother thing down pat, so let’s stick with what we know, huh?”

And yet, despite being most comfortable in the _big brother_ role, Souji felt like it didn’t quite encompass the breadth and depth of his feelings for Nanako these days. As he sat with her on the gazebo bench and hugged her and told her that everything would be fine, that he was there for her, that it was all right to be scared, and as she clung to him and whispered that she missed her dad, he thought he caught a glimpse of what it meant to be a parent. To be a rock-solid island in a storm-tossed sea, an icon of stability and constancy in relation to a child’s shifting and confusing world. To put himself aside and concentrate on her well-being. To know that being a big brother didn’t _cut it_, because big brothers get to take breaks now and then, and big brothers get to be comforted by their parents, too.

He already knew from experience that love had something to do with depending on another person, and with having them depend on you in turn, but it was different with Nanako than it was with Yosuke. With Yosuke, the support and dependency were mutual; they loved each other, considered each other equals, partners, with all the responsibilities that entailed, but with Nanako, the support went mostly one way. As much as Souji knew she loved him, he was the adult in their arrangement, the care-giving unit, and she depended on him in a way no one else had before.

And he was beginning to think he was okay with that.

It wasn’t like she was entirely dependent on him anyway, or like she had no one else to turn to. She joined the art club at her school and made some friends there, and perhaps not coincidentally, the days when she had club meetings were also the days that she came home with a smile that reached her eyes.

And then there was Teddie.

It rained the day after the fire at Nanako’s school, and Yosuke had left the apartment that morning without an umbrella, five minutes too late to be able to do anything about it. With this in mind, Souji carried an extra one with him to work that day, and then stopped by Junes on his way home to deliver it to him.

“Aww, jeez – next you’re gonna be bringing me boxed lunches, aren’t you?” Yosuke groaned. “We _are_ supposed to be keeping this a secret, you know…”

“Oh, you want to walk home in the rain? Do you repel water like a duck now? Sorry, I didn’t realize.”

Yosuke made a ridiculous face, and snatched the umbrella from his grasp. “Very funny. Thanks though, I guess. I shouldn’t be too much longer here, if you wanted to wait for me.”

“Thought we were supposed to be keeping some kind of secret…”

That earned him a light smack with the umbrella on his upper arm. “Never mind. Jerk. Go see if Nanako-chan will walk you home instead.”

“Nanako-chan?”

“Yeah, she’s wandering around here somewhere with Teddie. She, uh…” Yosuke’s face fell a little. “She’s not speaking to me today, I think, but I heard him say they were going to the food court, if you want to check.”

So he did check. He took the elevator to the roof and had to duck under his umbrella when he stepped outside and into the afternoon downpour. There, plainly visible in the middle of the food court with no one else around, Teddie and Nanako sat at the long, sheltered table, talking quietly with one another. The distance between them and the patter of rain on the canvas of his umbrella made it impossible to overhear their conversation, but Souji thought, with a weird little jolt in his stomach as he saw their hands clasped tightly together on the tabletop, that he probably didn’t want to anyway. They bolted apart when they saw him approach, Nanako looking down and away shyly, and Teddie displaying no shame whatsoever.

“Sensei! What a coincidence! We were just talking about – ow! Nana-chan, that was my foot!”

“H-hi big bro,” Nanako greeted him sweetly.

“Hi, guys,” said Souji. “Thought you had art club today, Nanako-chan?”

“O-oh, yeah,” she stammered. “We were supposed to, but there’s a leak in the club room ceiling. We went in and there was water all over the floor, so…”

“So I said I would spend time with Nana-chan instead!” Teddie declared proudly. “It’s no good for her to go home all by herself while you and Yosuke are busy working.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” said Souji. He was outwardly pleasant, but inwardly, a very paternal apprehension for Nanako spending time with boys roughly her age – or whatever Teddie was – began to blossom. “Nanako-chan, you ready to go home yet? Don’t forget we have company this evening…”

She nodded, and he held out his umbrella so she could move from beneath the bench shelter and slip under it without getting wet. “Bye, Teddie,” she called with a wave. “I’ll call you, okay?”

“O-okay,” said Teddie, and Souji was slightly alarmed to hear a strange note of trepidation in his voice. “Bye, Nana-chan. Bye, Sensei.”

They walked to the elevator together in silence. It was only after they were safely inside, when the door closed and they began their descent to the ground level, that Nanako finally spoke.

“It’s not what it looked like,” she blurted out in a rush. “Me and Teddie. H-he’s just a friend.”

Souji couldn’t say that he wasn’t relieved to hear it, but now that she seemed so desperate to ease his worries, he couldn’t help feeling guilty about his less than charitable feelings toward the situation. “It’s okay. Teddie’s a good friend; he cares a lot about you. When you were sick, that one time, he…”

He wasn’t sure how much or how little his uncle had divulged to her about the circumstances surrounding her hospitalization all those years ago, but when Nanako’s eyes lit up with interest, he realized at once that he’d said too much.

“Well – he wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” he finished lamely, eager to drop the topic.

Nanako’s shoulders slumped in visible disappointment, but she simply mumbled, “Yeah. I know,” and they discussed it no further.

  


***

“The fire was started in the boys’ bathroom,” Chie explained to him and Yosuke over coffee that evening. “Right across the hall from Nanako-chan’s class. No wonder she was scared, after what happened…”

In his peripheral vision, he saw Yosuke’s head drop, eyes fixed on his hands folded in his lap. He made a mental note to address that later, if there was any hope of assuaging his boyfriend’s lingering guilt over yesterday’s events. “Any chance it was deliberate?” Souji asked.

“Oh, definitely! The trash can was full of dry paper towels and cigarette butts – turns out some punks were smoking in there, and then set the trash on fire when they were done. Honestly, where do these kids even-“

“That’s not what I meant,” he clarified. “I mean, is there any chance it was done so close to Nanako-chan’s homeroom because she was in there? She did just lose her father and her house to a fire. The two incidents might be related.”

“Oh, right,” said Chie, sheepishly. “Honestly? I don’t think it’s very likely. Like, there was practically no chance that the bathroom fire would get very far, with so many people around to notice it, right? If it was the same person who set the fire at Dojima-san’s, why would they bother? It’s not really the most effective murder method.” She sighed, fingers tapping in rapid succession against the side of the mug cupped in her hands. “But…”

“But…?” Souji prompted her.

“But… to tell you the truth, Naoto-kun was wondering the same thing. She and Detective Satou questioned the guys involved yesterday to see what they could find out, so they’d know more about that than I could tell you. She’ll probably tell you all about it when she gets here.”

“Wait a minute,” Yosuke interrupted. “What does that mean if it _was_ set deliberately? That Nanako-chan’s being bullied at school?”

“We were kind of hoping you guys could tell us that, since you live with her and all…”

Souji frowned. He’d been thrilled at the possibility of a relation between the two fires – anything to bring closure to his uncle’s death so they could finally move on, start over as a new family – but the more he thought about it, the less sound the theory seemed to be. “It’s hard to say. She’s not as… open these days as she used to be. But we’ve noticed an improvement in her mood since she started going back to school. She might not _tell_ us if something were wrong, but surely we’d notice it…”

Chie shrugged and raised her hands. “Hey, not that you guys aren’t awesome guardians or anything – well, not that _you’re_ not an awesome guardian, Souji-kun –“

“Hey,” Yosuke protested feebly.

“But Nanako-chan grew up while you two were away, you know? Girls her age keep a lot bottled up inside. There’s all this pressure to fit in and be accepted, and other kids can be downright cruel when someone’s a little different. I know we all understand what it’s like to feel like we can’t show certain sides of ourselves to other people, so try to understand her feelings, okay?”

The matter was closed for discussion when the bathroom door opened and Nanako stepped out, patting down her long hair with a towel. She paused on the way to her bedroom and peeked out into the kitchen

“Hey, Nanako-chan,” Chie replied, suddenly taking on a much brighter tone. “How was school today?”

“Good,” came the expected, non-committal reply, the one that Souji recognized as something he would often tell his own parents whenever he didn’t feel like discussing his day – either because it had been awful, or because it had been too utterly normal to talk about. “I got to see Teddie for a while.”

“Teddie, huh?” Chie asked, turning to Souji with raised eyebrows. Souji just shrugged. “Well, that’s good. Make sure you keep him out of trouble, okay?”

“I will,” Nanako said with a smile, before disappearing into her room.

“He did seem kind of sweet on her, back in the day,” said Chie. “I mean, it was a little creepy then, but I guess it’s kind of cute now, don’t you think?”

“No,” said Yosuke, and Souji smiled in agreement.

It wasn’t long before Naoto, their other guest, came to the door, and then Nanako joined the four adults at the table for a discussion that Souji had been anticipating with no small amount of dread all day.

For her part, Naoto looked decidedly uncomfortable, sitting there with her arms crossed and her hat pulled down low over her eyes. “As you know, out of concern for Nanako-chan’s safety,” she began, “Detective Satou and I have been working on securing interviews with criminals whose arrests or incarcerations were a result of Dojima-san’s involvement in their cases. If any of them harboured a grudge against him, we would want to know immediately in case Nanako-chan might again become involved.”

Souji’s heart sank. He already knew her conclusions before she spoke them; they were written all over the cold expression on her face, and her closed, distant body language. “It was a dead end,” he surmised with a sigh.

She nodded. “I’m sorry. Everyone we spoke with had a solid alibi for that night – most of them were in prison, after all – and it was the same for their families. And because Inaba is such a small, relatively isolated community, none of them have ties to larger criminal organizations that we were able to uncover. Furthermore, even if one of them were responsible, no one witnessed anybody suspicious around the Dojima residence at that time. I’m afraid there’s simply no merit to pursuing this angle any further.”

“But that’s only one possibility, right?” asked Chie. “Did you find out anything from the kids who set the fire at the school?”

At this, Naoto paused, giving Souji a long, hesitant look before she spoke. “Yes, we did. But not in the way you’re hoping, unfortunately.”

Underneath the table, Yosuke’s hand found his knee and squeezed it briefly. Souji gave no response to either of them. He’d suspected from the fact that Naoto hadn’t outright said she’d found the answers they were looking for that what she _had_ come up with wasn’t going to be very palatable.

“The boys involved with the school incident do know Nanako-chan. One of them is in her homeroom, as a matter of fact,” said Naoto. “Jirou Matsumoto.”

At this name, Nanako gave a tiny gasp and protested immediately. “Jirou-kun wouldn’t hurt anybody. He hangs around with me and Mai-chan a lot. He might have done something stupid like this, but there’s no way he’d do something that would actually hurt anybody!”

“Whether or not that’s true,” said Naoto, “he has an alibi for that night as well. Both of the boys involved do. Therefore, we can say for certain that the fire started at the school was an unfortunate, but ultimately unrelated incident to the one started at your home.”

“Then what’s the connection between them?” Souji asked.

“To put it simply – the cause.”

“…Cigarettes?”

Naoto nodded. “Yes. After the incident at the school, Detective Satou and I checked the initial police reports from Dojima-san’s house, simply as a matter of precaution. We did find mention of there being several expired cigarettes, both inside and outside the garage area. The fire was started in one corner of the garage, close to several bags of trash that were supposed to have been put out for collection the following morning – it’s not difficult to imagine that they too could have been filled with paper and other flammable materials. Once the fire got started, it would have been extremely easy for it to spread and intensify, since garages are typically filled with potential accelerants.” Naoto paused here, doubtlessly hoping someone else would pick up her line of thought and run with it, but when no one spoke, she drew a deep breath, and continued. “From what I remember during the brief period when I worked with him, Dojima-san was a rather heavy smoker. Especially when he was under duress, which from what Nanako-chan and Dojima-san’s colleagues tell us, was definitely the case right before he died.”

“So you’re saying…”

“As… difficult as it may be to understand, I think we must accept the possibility that it was simply an accident, caused by Dojima-san himself.”

Souji clenched his fists, and exhaled quietly and calmly. To his right, Nanako made an almost inaudible noise; to his left, Yosuke shot both of them worried glances. None of them said anything.

“B-but that doesn’t mean it was Dojima-san who caused it!” Chie blurted out, apparently eager to ease the gloom that had settled over the table quite suddenly. “Nanako-chan, do you remember if your dad was in the garage late that night?”

Nanako was quiet for a long moment. She chewed her lip and stared at her hands, and didn’t meet anyone’s eyes as she finally spoke. “He was. Dad didn’t like to smoke in the house, so… he’d usually do it outside, or in the garage…”

Naoto gave her a sympathetic nod. “Then it’s most likely that Dojima-san did not fully extinguish his last cigarette that night, and either tossed it aside or put it in the trash. I imagine the fire would have taken some time to get started, under those conditions, but because nobody was monitoring the garage…”

“An accident…” Yosuke mumbled. “That’s just…”

Souji moved to put his arm around Nanako, but she squirmed out of his reach and slipped off to her room without a word. He caught Chie’s gaze, and she nodded and stood from the table to go after her, followed immediately by Yosuke.

“I know this isn’t exactly the answer you were expecting…” said Naoto, when they were alone.

“That’s… not it.”

“But you do have something on your mind.”

Souji nodded. “We’re missing something.”

Naoto raised an eyebrow at his wording, although it disappeared from sight under the low brim of her cap when she did. “The last time you said something like that, it was certainly worth considering. You’re still wondering why Dojima-san went back inside the house.”

“If the fire was my uncle’s fault, fine.  I can accept that,” said Souji. “But that won’t bring us any closure. That’s not _why_ he died. We need to know the truth.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Souji licked his lips, glanced over his shoulder – toward Nanako’s bedroom, toward the sound of Chie’s voice and Yosuke’s body framed in the doorway – and lowered his voice as he spoke. “The criminals who are in prison because of my uncle – you’ve spoken to _all_ of them?”

She caught his meaning immediately. Without another word, she got to her feet, and beckoned him to follow her out onto the stairs that led up to their apartment door.

“Please tell me you’re not asking what I think you’re asking,” she hissed under her breath as she closed the door behind them.

“He spent more time with my uncle in one year than I did.”

“He’s _insane_. He’s been rotting in prison for five years. And judging by his rather cooperative behaviour upon capture, he obviously bore no ill will toward us or Dojima-san for –“

“That’s not why I want to see him,” Souji insisted. “Think about it. If Nanako-chan and the people he worked with don’t know why he went back inside, if _I_ don’t know why, then who else can we ask to find out? Adachi made it his business to watch _all_ of us that year; there’s no way he wasn’t keeping a close eye on my uncle as well. Maybe he figured something out that we didn’t.”

“And maybe he’ll play you like a finely-tuned violin.”

“Why would he?” Souji challenged her. “You just said he bears us no ill will for his capture.”

Naoto turned an angry shade of red for being tripped up with her own words, but held her tongue.

“Look – he’s being held in Okina, right? There’ll be security guards and cameras and all sorts of protective measures in place. Nothing will happen to me.”

“Then at least let me accompany you to make sure.”

Souji shook his head. “It was always me he communicated with, in those letters he sent. He won’t talk if I’m not alone.”

“You’re not a relative,” she pointed out. “I can make the call for you, but if you want to arrange a meeting, he’ll have to be the one to tell the prison he wants to see you. How do you know he’ll cooperate?”

“He will,” said Souji, so confidently it almost calmed the sudden churning of his stomach. “Who else does he have?”

  


***

  
Having never been inside a prison before, Souji couldn’t say what he had been expecting from one, or whether or not the Okina Correctional Facility would have met those expectations if he’d had any. The bare, white walls seemed almost bright and welcoming as Souji stepped in out of the rain, and the procedure of being signed in and searched prior to his arranged meeting was as stern and professional as possible.

“You’re the first visitor this one has had in a while,” the guard told him, as they walked together down to the very end of a long, eerie hallway. With no furnishings on the walls or along the floor to absorb the sound, their footsteps came back to them in a thunderous echo, mercifully covering up the drumming in his ears that he recognized as the nervous hammering of his heart. “He’s surprisingly quiet. Off his rocker, though. Good luck getting anything out of him that makes any sense.”

Souji allowed the guard to lead him into the last room at the end of the hall, and stood to one side of the door as the man locked it securely behind them. The room was small, cramped, and windowless, featured what he suspected to be a two-way mirror on the far wall, and sitting at the table in the middle of it with his hands cuffed in front of him –

“Souji-kun.” Adachi practically _purred_ his name, like it was a thing to be savoured and rolled around on the tongue before spitting it out. The sound of it made Souji’s skin crawl. “Man, oh man. Look at you. You’re all grown up. How long have I been in here, anyway?”

“Adachi-san.” Souji took the empty chair opposite Adachi and sat down, resting his hands on the table in the same fashion as his counterpart, to show that they were empty. He kept his voice and his movements careful and measured, acting with the knowledge that he needed to establish some level of trust between them if this was going to work; his posture was chosen with this intention, as well as the use of the respectful suffix. “You look well.”

It was a lie. Prison had hollowed out his cheekbones and darkened the rings under his eyes, etched lines in his face that hadn’t been there the last time Souji had seen him. His fingernails were chewed down and ragged; doubtlessly they wouldn’t let him get his hands on nail clippers or anything even remotely sharp and metal. But even with the visible wear on his facial features, his eyes were as sharp and calculating as ever, and that smile that used to be _dopey_ and was now simply _sadistic_ had not faded.

“Well, that’s nice of you to say so, kid,” said Adachi, stretching that smile into a grin. “I tell ya, it sure is nice to see a familiar face. No one _writes_, no one comes to _see me_… fuck, it’s just one big _bore_ fest in here. So, c’mon, I cleared a spot in my busy schedule for you, so give me the goods. What’s been going on since I got tossed in here?”

Souji kept his own face blank as he carefully studied Adachi’s, trying to find some trace of cruelty or deception there – and surprisingly, finding none. “No one told you,” he said softly, and it was not a question.

Adachi laughed. “Told me what? Didn’t you hear what I said? No one tells me the time of day in here, never mind-“

“My uncle is dead.”

That got a reaction, although Souji felt more sick than satisfied to see it play out on Adachi’s features. The sharp, darting eyes went still, the smile shrank and fell until his mouth was nothing more than a dark gash across his face, and his hands clenched each other tightly on the tabletop as he processed the truth that the rest of Inaba had already been forced to accept.

“No one told me,” Adachi said, quietly and evenly. No apologies, no condolences, no ‘sorry to hear it, kid’ – Souji felt strangely relieved to finally be faced with such a simple and honest reaction, instead of something staged or contrived. Or maybe he was just happy to have finally driven a knife into Adachi’s guts and twisted them all up. He felt good, either way. “Not like anyone would. I bet they’re all trying hard to forget I ever existed, down at the station. You know he actually came to visit me sometimes? Only person who ever did, before you.”

“He was a good man,” Souji agreed, and he went into a brief description of what they thought to have occurred at the Dojima residence that night in March.

“Fuck. What a waste.” Adachi snorted thoughtfully, and leaned back in his chair. Souji didn’t mirror his posture this time. “So what about Nanako-chan?”

“You,” Souji said coldly, “don’t get to ask that.”

Adachi’s twisted smile returned and he laughed derisively at Souji’s attempt at maintaining authority in their conversation. “Yeah, yeah, don’t get all self-righteous on me, kid. I can guess at it, anyway. You’re too fucking suave and smart for a shithole like Inaba – I’m guessing you’re still there because poor little Nanako-chan’s got no one else. Am I right?”

Souji wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a response, but that in itself seemed to be all the response he required.

“Fuck. I sympathize, Souji-kun, I really do. You had it good in the city, huh? Doing something good, something _important_ \- oh, c'mon, don't make that face.  Dojima-san used to tell me all about how well you were getting along in school, shacking up with your whiny little boyfriend and all.” Souji’s eye twitched, but he held back a retort. Adachi was just running his mouth; he didn’t actually know about Yosuke, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to reveal that information to him. “And you had to give it all up, didn’t you? You had something good, and then because of one stupid mistake, you got dragged out to the sticks to do a thankless job. I know how you feel, kid. Life’s a bitch.”

“Regardless,” Souji said, trying to make himself sound bored with the proceedings – trying to ignore that tiny, dark ripple inside him that throbbed with pleasure at the painful truth of Adachi’s words – “I’m here now, and I want to ask you something. Something about my uncle. And I hope you’ll indulge me.”

Adachi shrugged. “Go for it. I gotta admit, I’m pretty curious what’s so important that the great Souji Seta would lower himself to visiting me to find out.”

Choosing not to acknowledge the sarcasm, Souji went straight to the heart of the matter. “On the night of the fire, my uncle got Nanako-chan out of the house first, before going back inside. It was the smoke inhalation that killed him, not the fire. I need to know why he went back in, after he’d already rescued Nanako-chan.”

“How the fuck should I know?” Adachi sneered. “You just told me he was dead a minute ago.”

“That’s not what this is about. You knew him pretty well during the time that you worked together – probably better than I did, I’m ashamed to admit – so think. Whatever it was had to have been enormously important; so important that he’d risk his life for the chance to get it back. Something that he’d even leave Nanako-chan for…”

Adachi had already figured it out; he could tell from the way his eyes snapped into focus and the corners of his mouth twitched upward, and it absolutely infuriated him that the answer he needed came so _easily_ to Adachi, while he had struggled over it for weeks. “Something more important than Nanako-chan? Gee, I can’t possibly imagine what _that_ might have been.”

“I can see that I’m wasting my time,” Souji said coolly. He pushed back from the table, and Adachi flinched satisfyingly at the loud scrape of the metal chair legs on the tile floor. “Goodbye, Adachi-san. I don’t expect we’ll be seeing each other again anytime soon.”

Adachi gave an aggravated sigh. “Wait.”

Souji waited.

“I know you, kid – you’re not this dim.” Adachi peered at him curiously. “Did he really not tell you?”

“I’m a very patient man, Adachi-san, but you’re still managing to try that patience.”

“C’mon, Souji-kun – you mean to tell me you lived in that house for a year and you never realized that there was someone Dojima-san loved more than little Nanako-chan?”

Souji fought hard to keep his face neutral, a battle he could feel himself losing in a slow, terrible slide. He did not like where this conversation was going one bit. “What do you mean?”

“His _wife_, kid. Jeez, I thought you were supposed to be smart. He didn’t talk to you about her at all?”

“I…” Souji sank down into the chair again. His knees had gone weak. “Yeah, he did, once. He told me she was killed. But he didn’t seem to want to talk much about it, so I…”

_Never asked_. Souji remembered, clearly, sitting across from his uncle at the kitchen table, with that _folder_ with all the known information about his aunt’s death sitting between them. He’d always meant to ask about it, but one thing led to another – working late nights at the hospital and his tutoring job to make enough money for the team’s supplies, Naoto disappearing, Nanako’s kidnapping and subsequent hospitalization…

_I’m here until March_, he’d told himself. _There’s plenty of time._

“I’m not surprised it took you this long to find out,” Adachi went on, rather smugly. “He played that card pretty close to the chest. Well, unless he was drunk off his ass, of course. Everyone at the station knew it had happened, but they didn’t know he was still obsessing over it. So he kept that little folder with him everywhere he went - in his desk when he was at work, and on the goddamn kitchen table when he was at home. He couldn't ever leave it alone. It was everything he had for... fuck. _Years._ That was a little secret between him, and me, and… well, now you, I guess.”

“I see.” The room felt smaller all of a sudden, like it and the dark hollows of Adachi’s face would close in and swallow him up if he stayed here any longer. He got to his feet. “I think that’s all I need to know. Thank you for your time, Adachi-san.”

“That’s all? Gee, not even the full half hour. Well, it was nice seein’ you again, kid. Tell Nanako-chan I said hello.”

Souji clenched his hands into fists and shoved them into his pockets to avoid connecting one with the bastard’s face. Wordlessly, he nodded at the guard, who moved to the door to unlock it and escort him out. Before he could escape, however, Adachi called out to him one last time.

“Hey, Souji-kun. You know, I sent you a letter, after everything went down back then. Did you ever get it?”

Souji stopped.

“Yes,” he said quietly, without turning around. “I burned it.”

He did not look back.


	12. Chapter 12

Souji worked a lot of afternoons and evenings, functioning as sort of a one-man, makeshift after-class cram school, and consequently, he and Yosuke kept missing each other by an hour or two most days. Yosuke was sort of used to it by now; even when they’d been going to school, their hectic schedules had rarely allowed them to see each other for a full day, and getting to stay in bed together until noon on a Sunday had been a luxury of the highest order. But like with so many other aspects of their lives, this routine was now disturbed by the presence of a third person. With Nanako in the picture, things were slightly more awkward than usual, in a plethora of ways.

For starters, Souji coming home late and Nanako being busy with after school responsibilities and clubs meant that dinner preparations often fell to Yosuke, who was inarguably the worst cook in the household, and this made nobody happy. They didn’t complain, exactly, but there was no mistaking the strained expressions on their faces when he presented them with meals that looked, smelled, and tasted as though they were composed primarily of carbon. Not even the neighbourhood wildlife seemed to want it.

“I’ll teach you to cook,” Souji offered. “Or Nanako-chan will. You’ll catch on quickly, I promise.”

“Hmm,” Yosuke replied noncommittally, refraining from voicing his thoughts about _those_ ideas. He didn’t really want his drastically reduced time with Souji to be taken up by cooking lessons, of all things, and Nanako… well…

Dinner was only one concern, and at least he could talk about that one with somebody. On top of that, apart from that one lunchtime tryst that they had dared not repeat, their sex life had ground to a complete halt. Nanako’s room was across the hall from theirs, and the walls weren’t exactly soundproof. It seemed that they always _meant_ to get around to it, late at night after she’d already fallen asleep, or in the mornings after she left for school, but Souji’s late evenings and Yosuke’s early mornings usually left one or both of them feeling much too drained to follow up on those plans. He tried not to let it get to him – again, this was nothing they hadn’t gone through before during stressful exam periods and long stretches of paper-writing – but more and more he was beginning to feel like he just needed to vent at someone, someone other than Souji, who would just feel guilty for something that wasn’t really his fault. And as for anyone else who might listen, it was kind of impossible to complain about the lack of sex you weren’t supposed to be having in the first place.

Even worse than _that_, however, was the fact that on those days that Souji was late to come home, Nanako almost always returned earlier than he did, providing the two of them plenty of opportunities for stilted, awkward conversation that never seemed to go anywhere meaningful. Yosuke hated how spectacularly his relationship with Nanako seemed to have tumbled downhill ever since his return to Inaba, but he was completely lost on what he needed to do to fix it, and she wasn’t giving him any hints. If he could figure out what he was doing wrong, other than existing in her space, he could at least stand a chance at doing something about it. It killed him to be disliked by anybody under normal circumstances, but to have it come from _Nanako_ of all people seriously got under his skin.

_Maybe Souji’s right_, he thought to himself, in his more desperate moments. _Maybe she thinks you’re competition._ With all her questions about love and _kissing_ and her watching them like a hawk, it was obvious that she had somebody in mind. Was it Souji? Then what about all that time she was spending hanging around Junes with Teddie? Yosuke shuddered, involuntarily. He didn’t know which of the two he wanted it to be the least.

Nanako came home from school at a reasonable hour that day, just in time for Souji to call the apartment phone and say that he would be later than expected. While Yosuke assured him that it was fine, and they’d save him some leftovers, his stomach clenched slightly in apprehension at what promised to be another uncomfortable evening.

To be fair, Nanako didn’t seem too happy with Souji’s continued absences, either. (_Of course she’s not, she’s in love with him!_ was his immediate reaction, followed closely by a more rational voice he’d been picking up from being in a relationship with Souji. _Don’t be stupid. Her dad used to pull this disappearing act all the time too, remember? She just doesn’t want to see it happen again._)

That second thought made Yosuke frown a little, sadly, as he watched her open the fridge to find something to make for dinner. He needed to set his own feelings aside on this one, he realized. Nanako might have grown up, but even with him and Souji here, she was still as lonely as ever. He needed to be an adult and do something about that.

“Hey, uh…” Yosuke began, conversationally. “Do you need some help? I promise I won’t go near the stove.”

She gave him that glance-and-hesitate treatment that he had become so accustomed to receiving from her in the last few weeks, but nodded her assent. Yosuke smiled in relief. It wouldn’t be anything more than casual “how was your day” conversation, with the occasional “pass me that knife, please” tossed in for good measure, but at least it was _something_.

They ate dinner together in front of the TV, and Yosuke did the dishes after they were finished. He was capable of doing that much, even if he had been practically relegated to that role ever since first moving in with Souji due to his appalling lack of skill in the culinary arts. But he didn’t want Nanako to retreat to her room while he was cleaning up, thus putting an end to his attempts to repair their relationship somewhat, so he tried to keep her engaged while he did it.

“So,” he began, his voice slow and set in what he hoped was a friendly, teasing tone, “how are things progressing with your mystery guy?”

“W-what?” she stammered, looking mildly uncomfortable. Yosuke felt guilty right away for bringing it up. “There’s… there’s no one like that.”

“Ahh… sorry,” he apologized. “That time you were asking about me and Souji, it kind of sounded like there was…”

“That’s…” Nanako looked down and away, her mild discomfort shifting into a weird sort of raw ache that took Yosuke by surprise. “It’s nothing,” she finished lamely.

Yosuke dried his hands on a dish towel, and turned around to face her, leaning back on the counter and trying to seem way more relaxed than he felt at the moment. “Are you sure? You know… you can talk to me, Nanako-chan. Not just about this, but anything.” Unless there was some mysterious girl stuff involved, he thought, which made him add hastily, “And if it’s not something you can tell me or Souji, you know you can talk to Chie or Yukiko-san, right?”

“I know…” she said quietly, without sounding altogether convinced. Almost in a way that guaranteed she would do nothing of the sort. Despite having spent most of their lives apart, she had turned out frustratingly like Souji, in that way.

Or maybe it was just him. Yosuke let an uncomfortable silence stretch on between them for a few moments, before he decided that he’d had enough of this sliding in sideways business. If she wasn’t going to be forthcoming with him, he’d have to tackle the problem head-on; she was like Souji in that way, too. “Nanako-chan, did I… do something to upset you? Ever since I came back, things have been a little… _weird_ between us. Is something wrong?”

She met his eyes then, warily, but didn’t say anything.

“Because I know I say some stuff without thinking,” he pressed on in a rush, “and – and I don’t even know if I’m really any good at this big brother thing, but I really, _really_ want to be. And if I’m doing something wrong, you can just… I don’t know, yell at me until I get it or something. That’s what Souji does, I swear it’s really the only way I learn anything –“

“No, that’s not – you’re not doing anything wrong,” she interrupted, shaking her head. “It’s… I think it’s me.”

_Oh my god Souji was right what the fuck do I do -_ “Oh,” he said, surprisingly calmly. “Uh… okay. Can we talk about it, then? I just… think we need to put this behind us, if we can.”

And finally, to his immense relief, she nodded.

They relocated to the more comfortable living room couch, Yosuke taking one end and Nanako sitting with her knees drawn up close to her chest on the other. He felt a deep pang of sympathy for her suddenly, to see how deeply discomfited she appeared, and wondered if he should be pushing her when she already had so much to worry about. Chie would probably have his head if she found out what he was doing. But it seemed like he was finally about to make some progress on whatever this was that was plaguing them, and that made him reluctant to back down.

“I’m not really sure how to…” Nanako frowned and hugged her knees tight. “It’s complicated.”

“It’s okay,” he assured her.  “Take your time.”

She drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly. When she seemed to have gathered up the necessary courage, she began. “I’ve been having these dreams, lately. Bad ones.”

As she said it, Yosuke remembered their first night in the apartment, the night that Nanako had gotten out of bed and accidentally found out about him and Souji. She’d complained about a bad dream that night, too. “About… what happened to your dad?” he asked, cautiously.

She shook her head. “About you.”

That threw him for a loop. He paused for a second, just to make sure he’d heard her right, and then asked, “About _me_?”

“Well… I don’t know if it’s _about_ you, exactly,” she clarified. “I don’t really know if it’s about _anything_. But you’re there. You’re always there. You, and big bro, and … and sometimes I can see Teddie, and Yukiko-san, and Rise-chan. Sometimes I hear Kanji-san yelling; sometimes Chie-san. Naoto-san, too. And… and someone else. Sometimes all of you are there together.”

She rested her head against her knees, and tilted it to one side so she could see him. With one finger, she pointed directly at him – at his face, he thought.

“And you’re wearing _those_.”

About a billion little incandescent lightbulbs went off in Yosuke’s head all at once as he saw her extend her finger toward his glasses. Son of a _bitch_. Wearing them had become second-nature to him, so much so that when he had to take them off for sleep or for showering, his hand sometimes automatically went to push them up the bridge of his nose even though they weren’t there. He didn’t even think about them anymore, and even though Souji liked to tease him and say that he looked better in his gaudy old orange frames than these newer, more conservative ones, he didn’t even particularly connect them with the TV world as much as he used to.

But Nanako would. The first and only time she would have seen him wearing glasses before now had to have been one of the most traumatic moments of her life. How could he have _missed_ that?

More importantly, how much from back then did she remember?

“I don’t really know where we are,” she continued, “but it’s very pretty. Clouds, rainbows, a sunset… It must be nice there.” Her frown deepened. “But for some reason, it’s scary, too. When I can remember all of you, everyone is really upset. Big bro looks so scared, and – and it makes _me_ scared, too. I want to tell him it’s okay, but…”

Yosuke shifted a little closer to her on the couch, feeling overwhelmed with the need to _protect_ her all of a sudden, to wipe away the unwanted memory of a time he himself had often wished he could forget. “It _is_ okay,” he said. “It’s just a dream. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I know.” She sighed, a sound that was deep and far too world-weary for someone so young. “I’ve been having these dreams for a long time, but… they’re getting worse. They’ve been worse ever since you came back. They’re – they’re more vivid, you know? Harder to wake up from. Sometimes I just lie there after I do wake up, and I can’t _move_, and…”

Yosuke moved close enough to put a comforting arm around her shoulders. She didn’t object.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” said Nanako, swiping at her eyes. “You just – the way you look now, it makes me _think_ about it, and – and I…”

“It’s okay,” he told her again, firmly. “I get it now. I should have known that’s what was upsetting you, but I didn’t even think of it.” He snorted. “Guess I should have gotten contacts instead, huh?”

But she didn’t laugh. He felt her shoulders go rigid underneath his arm, and when she raised her head to look at him, the wild look in her eyes made him distinctly uneasy.

“Why would you have known?” she asked.

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“About my dream. About your glasses. Why would you have known?”

Yosuke gaped at her, his mouth opening and closing silently as his brain went into panic mode and became thoroughly incapable of producing a viable excuse. Oh shit. Oh _shit_, she didn’t _know_.

Stupidly, he thought that it was nice that he no longer had to worry about how to tell his parents he was seeing his best friend, because Souji was going to _murder him_.

Nanako turned toward him on the couch, her discomfort and worry completely overridden by the rush of her discovery. It was the most energetic he had seen her in weeks. “It _did_ happen,” she said breathlessly. “It was real, you really _were_ there. You, and big bro, and Teddie – everyone!”

“Nanako-chan, I – I don’t know what –“

“And then I woke up in the hospital, right? Please, Yosuke-nii, I can’t take this anymore. You have to tell me what happened. You have to take me there!”

“Wh-what?! No, Nanako-chan, you don’t understand –“ Oh, Souji was going to murder him _so bad_, but he could not possibly backpedal enough to save himself now. And anyway, wasn’t he sort of happy that Nanako was actually speaking to him again…? “Okay – maybe you’re right. Maybe that really did happen. But it’s… it’s really, really dangerous. I’m not even kidding. You woke up in a _hospital_ \-- doesn’t that tell you anything?”

Nanako looked like she desperately wanted to say something about that, but managed to bite back her words at the last second.

“I’m not trying to be mean; I know how frustrating it must be not to be able to remember it. But please, _trust me_, Nanako-chan. You don’t want this.”

But that was the wrong thing to say. He flinched as a hurt, angry look flickered across her face, and she spat out, “You _don’t_ know. You don’t understand at all…”

Yosuke didn’t know what to say to that, and by the time he felt ready to respond, she had already pulled away from him and gotten to her feet.

“Never mind,” she mumbled, heading toward her room. “I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”

She didn’t slam her bedroom door exactly, but it seemed to Yosuke that it closed a little harder than it should have. He sat there for a long time, too shocked to do or think much of anything, much less to realize that, without even trying all that hard, he had somehow managed to completely mangle his best chance at reconciliation with her.  



	13. Chapter 13

When Souji arrived home later that night, it was to a surprisingly silent, lifeless apartment. He wondered for a moment if Yosuke and Nanako had gone out somewhere, but the lights were on and the front door opened easily without him having to use his key. When he called out to announce his presence, however, no one answered. Frowning, he kicked off his shoes and loosened his tie, and gave the living room a quick glance, finding only empty space where he would usually find at least one of them watching TV at this time of night. Continuing on, he found the door to Nanako’s room closed, but that was nothing new. When he finally peeked into his own room, he saw Yosuke sprawled out on the bed, headphones jammed tight over his ears and an arm flung over his eyes. Souji’s heart sank. This wasn’t ever a good sign to come home to.

“Yosuke?” Souji asked, not really expecting him to hear him over the music. But he did, or maybe he just sensed another presence in the room, and he moved his arm far enough to make eye contact.

“Hey, partner,” he said glumly. “Late night.”

Souji paused for a moment, and then settled on the edge of his side of the bed, giving Yosuke some space. Crowding him when he was in a bad mood wasn’t typically a good idea. “Yeah,” he said, blowing out a short, tired breath. “Sorry, I had a tutoring session right after class, and then I had to stop in and talk to Naoto for a little while.”

“About what?” Yosuke asked distractedly.

He stared hard at the pattern on the comforter, finding the edge of it where the colours and shapes began to repeat, and carefully considered how to proceed. After sitting and agonizing over it for a few days, turning it over in his mind, he’d finally resolved to tell Naoto what he’d learned from Adachi, but it was the understatement of the year to say that he was reluctant to bring up that name around Yosuke. If Naoto had been _disapproving_ about their meeting, Yosuke would be _incensed_. “About my uncle,” he finally responded, in what he hoped was a neutral tone. “I think they’re about ready to close the case. With no other leads or witnesses, there’s really not much else they can do at this point.” He drew a deep breath, mentally preparing himself for the confrontation that was about to follow. “Look, there’s something I… Yosuke?”

His boyfriend’s gaze had drifted away, somewhere past him. When he followed it, he found himself staring at a blank spot on the wall between the window and his dresser. Despite his proximity, Yosuke couldn’t possibly have been any further away.

“Hey,” he said, leaning forward a little into his line of sight. “Is everything all right?”

Yosuke pulled his headphones down with a deep sigh. It occurred to Souji, from the extended silence that unfolded after he’d spoken, that his mp3 player was either turned down pretty far or not actually playing at all. “Yeah,” he mumbled, and then winced. “Sort of… Not really. Sorry, I was miles away. What were you saying?”

Souji couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed with Yosuke’s even shorter than usual attention span – especially not when it provided him an easy out from having to explain how exactly he had discovered the reason behind his uncle’s death. “Nothing,” he said, with a reassuring smile tacked on. “It can wait. What’s up?”

“Mm… you can’t guess?”

“Does it have something to do with why Nanako-chan seems to be in bed at nine-thirty?”

Yosuke let out a tiny, dry, humourless laugh. “Bingo. Right as usual. You win a prize.”

Souji sighed. He knew how badly this situation with Nanako was getting to him, but part of him wished, maybe a little selfishly, that Yosuke could just let it go. It was the biggest wedge that had been driven into their makeshift little family so far, and if left there, the cracks it had already made would only deepen. “You just need to give her some time, and some space,” he said, for what felt like the hundredth time. “If you just _ask_ her –“

“I did,” Yosuke said quickly, cutting him off. “I know why she’s avoiding me.”

“Well, what is it?”

“She, uh…” Yosuke groaned and rolled over onto his side, seemingly so they could face each other, but all he did was bury his head into his pillow. “Oh, god, partner, _please_ don’t get pissed, okay? Please promise me.”

He held his breath. It had been a downward spiral ever since he’d walked into the room, and he still found that he liked where this was going less and less. “I think I’ll save that promise for _after_ you tell me. What happened, Yosuke?”

Yosuke let out a whine, short and cringing, but he couldn’t stall any longer, and he knew it. He breathed deep, held it for a full second, and then rushed out, “Sheknowsabouttheotherworld” on the exhale.

Souji started, like his skin had suddenly decided to just get up and leave the room without the rest of him. A dozen questions jumped to the tip of his tongue in the space of a second, but the one that squeezed past and actually made it out of his mouth was: “_How_?”

Yosuke squirmed guiltily, and looked up from his pillow. “I… sort of, accidentally…”

“_Yosuke_!” It came out louder than he’d intended, with enough force to make the other man flinch, and he quickly reined his anger back in with a calming breath, and with a glance in the direction of Nanako’s room. Lowering his voice to a hiss, he continued. “What the hell were you thinking? She can’t _know_ about that. Nobody can!”

“Dude, she already did! I mean – kind of. She doesn’t know where it actually is, I just sorta… let slip that the whole Namatame thing really happened. She _remembers_ it, man – she remembers my glasses if you can believe that – she just didn’t think it was _real_.”

“So what, she shut herself in her room because you told her that it wasn’t just her imagination?” Souji asked, unable to keep the acid out of his tone. “That’s not right. You’re not telling me the whole story, and I really think you need to.”

He knew he’d hit the nail on the head, from the way Yosuke flinched again and hunched his shoulders, getting as visibly and physically defensive as he would in a fist fight. He didn’t enjoy pushing him like this – he didn’t enjoy fighting with him period – but if he didn’t, Yosuke would do his best to ignore the conflict entirely and then nothing would get done. “She… she asked me to tell her what happened to her, exactly, before she woke up in the hospital. And… she wants to go there. To heaven.” The look on Souji’s face must have been even more incredulous than it felt, because when Yosuke caught sight of it, he hastened to rush out, “I said no! Jeez, partner, the place is still infested with shadows! You really think I’d do something like that?”

“I think you desperately want Nanako-chan to like you,” said Souji. “And I think there are a lot of things you might do to make that happen.”

He regretted saying it at once. Yosuke sat upright, eyes wide and mouth hanging open, looking as though Souji had reached out and slapped him across the face. “What the _hell_, Souji?! Fine, okay, I’m not as _perfect_ as you, I make a lot of mistakes, but I would _never_ do anything that would put Nanako-chan in danger. You know that!”

“I’m sorry,” Souji sighed, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.”

But his apology couldn’t erase the hurt look that had crept onto Yosuke’s face, eased into the lines there and tightened them. He shook his head. “Dude, what’s with you tonight?”

Souji looked away. He couldn’t tell him the whole truth – bringing up Adachi now would escalate this past a point he was mentally prepared to deal with at the moment. But that was the answer. For days now, it seemed his mind had been occupied with nothing but that difficult truth Adachi had forced him to face, the knowledge that had he just taken a little bit of time to pay attention to the signs, maybe he could have _done_ something about his uncle’s obsession. He’d been fooling himself all this time; his uncle _had_ wanted him to ask about that damn folder, so that he wouldn’t need to bring it up himself. It was stupid and self-centered of him to think so, he knew that, but he had helped so many people during his time in Inaba. If he’d tried just a little harder, could he have helped him, too?

But none of this made it past his thoughts. What he told Yosuke instead was no less true, but certainly not the whole story. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Nanako-chan is really the only family I have now, except for you. My uncle’s gone, my parents might as _well_ be, for all they’re around or seem to give a damn. I just can’t let anything happen to her.”

“I know, man,” Yosuke said after a moment, and his voice was noticeably softer. “Trust me, I know. I wouldn’t let anything happen to her, either. That’s why I told her ‘no’.”

“Yeah.” Souji nodded. “You did the right thing.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Yosuke. “But now she’s pissed at me. Look, man, you – you need to talk to her. We don’t have to take her there, but not knowing isn’t any good for her. She’s old enough – she deserves to know the truth. And she doesn’t listen to me like she listens to you, so…”

“Okay,” said Souji, nodding again. “You’re right. Let her blow off steam tonight, but I’ll talk to her tomorrow, when things are calmer.”

“All right. Thanks, partner…”

Souji stood from the bed and pulled his tie the rest of the way off, and hung it up in the closet. “But… I’m serious, Yosuke,” he said, as he closed the door and began to undress. “I can’t keep acting as a go-between for the two of you. At some point you’re going to have to stop worrying so much about whether Nanako-chan _likes_ you. It doesn’t matter if she does or not. We’re not supposed to be her friends.”

Yosuke looked at his hands, instead of at him. When he had finished changing into more comfortable clothing, he went and knocked on Nanako’s door, but the lights were out and she didn’t answer. He opened it anyway, and saw her in bed, apparently asleep. He wished for a brief, irrational moment that she would stay that way, that they wouldn’t need to have the conversation he had just promised Yosuke they would have, that she’d never have to know how close she had come to slipping out of their lives entirely. But it had already been set in motion; it was out of his hands, now, no longer his decision to make.

He shut the door again, and scowled at himself.

How realistic was it to want to protect her from the world?  


  


***

Nanako emerged from her room the next morning, when Souji was up and making breakfast and Yosuke was already gone to work. He’d been awake since the first light of dawn had crept through their window, trying to think of the best way to approach her about her argument with Yosuke, and the same subject was still on his mind when she came to him that morning with her phone pressed tightly to her chest.

“Big bro,” she said, “since it’s Saturday, can I stay over at Mai-chan’s house tonight?”

_Probably doesn’t want to be here when Yosuke gets back…_ Souji thought sympathetically. That put a dent in his plans, but there was really no reason to refuse. Much of her time had been occupied by school lately, and she needed to see her friends more often to just unwind and be a regular kid. “I don’t see why not. Are you going right after school, or coming back here first?”

She thought for a moment. “I have art club after classes, so… I guess I should go right from school. I can take a bag with me.”

“All right. Make sure you call me when you get there though, okay? And make sure you pack your umbrella. The sky’s been pretty dark all morning.”

“I will.” To his surprise, she hurried over to him, stood on her toes, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Thanks, big bro. I love you.”

He smiled unguardedly, surprised and oddly pleased by the gesture, and said, “I love you, too,” as she turned and rushed back to her room with her phone glued to her ear, chatting happily to whom he presumed was Mai on the other end.

They were so close, he thought, to being on the right track to becoming the family they should be. There was still so much work ahead of all of them, but with every step, with every little moment like that one, he felt like he could reach out and grasp that goal in his hands, however briefly.

He wasn’t too disappointed about having to put off that conversation until tomorrow. He was far too content to let the warmth of that simple gesture carry him throughout his entire day.

  
Nanako called him when she had arrived safely at Mai’s house, just as promised, and Souji was already cleaning up from dinner preparations when Yosuke walked through the door later that evening, looking as though he had narrowly dragged himself out of the Samegawa. Rain came down in sheets outside, and now in their porch as his hair and every square inch of clothing on his body dripped water in steady rivulets and puddled on the floor.

“That sucked,” grumbled Yosuke.

Souji chuckled, and used the dishtowel he was holding to give Yosuke’s hair a rough once-over, enough so that it would stop dripping water all down his face. “Sorry, you left the house before I realized it was going to rain today. Dinner’s almost ready.” He paused in his pat-down just long enough to plant a kiss on his surprisingly cold lips. “…You’re freezing.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not exactly August out there, partner.”

“Well, go get changed before you catch a cold. And before we have a small lake in our porch.”

Yosuke made a face at him, but took his advice, disappearing into the bedroom and reappearing a few minutes later in drier, more comfortable clothes. He hovered around the kitchen table and watched Souji serve up their food onto plates, asking curiously after a moment, “Nanako-chan’s not back yet?”

Souji shook his head. “She’s staying at her friend’s house tonight.”

“Oh,” said Yosuke. “So… you didn’t get a chance to talk to her, then.”

“No,” Souji admitted, as he set the plates on the table. “I didn’t want to dump it on her first thing in the morning and have her worried all day, you know? When she comes home tomorrow, we’ll all sit down together – you, me, and her – and we’ll talk this over and deal with it. Like a family.”

“Dude,” Yosuke said with a smile, “you sound like a dad already. How are you so good at that?”

“Dunno. Leading your ass around inside the TV probably had something to do with it.”

“Jerk,” Yosuke snorted. He nodded his head toward the plates of food, and asked, “Anyway, what’s with all this? I mean, it smells good, but it must have taken you all day…”

“Not really,” said Souji, although Yosuke was close to the truth, and he was pleased that he’d noticed. “I kind of… feel bad about the way I was acting last night. I’ve been really preoccupied lately, and I know things haven’t been going smoothly so far, but… I don’t know. I feel like that’s about to change. And since Nanako-chan’s gone until tomorrow, I thought it’d be nice to stay in tonight and spend some time with you. We can have dinner, watch a movie—“ He raised an eyebrow, suggestively. “—not watch a movie... Whatever you like.”

Yosuke seemed at a loss for words, but in a good way. It looked like he could no more hold back the smile that came to his lips than Souji could earlier that morning, which was what he had been aiming for. “That – that sounds good,” he finally replied.

Souji stepped toward him and slipped his arms around his waist, pulling him close at the same time that he began to dot his neck and jaw and ear with playful, ticklish nips and kisses, not stopping until Yosuke was laughing and squirming helplessly in his arms. “Hmm,” he noted, after pressing his lips to a spot under the other man’s jaw that drew out a noise he could _feel_ vibrating beneath the skin and made him squirm for an entirely different reason. “You’re still cold. You could probably do with a warm shower after dinner.”

“Dinner can wait, dude,” Yosuke said, a little breathlessly, a little unsteadily, and he grabbed Souji by the hand and pulled him into the bathroom, his face alight with a devilish grin.

  


***

  
They lay together on the sofa much, much later that evening, the living room lit only by the street light filtering through the curtains and the faint glow of the television screen, now rolling the credits of the movie they had been half-watching. Yosuke was completely sprawled out, half on top of Souji and half wedged between him and the back of the sofa, the two of them drifting in and out of wakefulness as they lay there contentedly in each other’s arms.

“You’re right, y’know…” Yosuke mumbled into his shirt.

“About what?” Souji asked, fumbling for the remote until he found it, and then clicking the television off and plunging them further into darkness. The rain on the window cast long, rippling shadows toward them all the way from the other side of the room. He felt comfortable, like being buried securely under dryer-warm blankets with a snowstorm rattling the house from outside. There was no other place he would rather be, at that moment.

“About… things,” Yosuke continued. “It’s been really weird, honestly, living here with you and Nanako-chan, but – I dunno. I’ve never really wanted anything to _work_ this badly before. Apart from me and you, I mean.”

Souji said nothing. He already had a pretty good idea of where Yosuke was going with this, and didn’t want to interrupt him before he could get there.

Yosuke shifted a little, propped himself up on his elbow on one side so he could see Souji’s face. “I guess that’s why I want Nanako-chan to like me so badly. You both deserve to be happy, after all the shit you’ve had to put up with lately. I don’t want to screw things up for you.”

“You’re not screwing things up,” Souji assured him. “I said that I couldn’t do this without you, and I meant it. You’re here to stay.”

Yosuke smiled, a little wistfully. “Let’s hope your parents agree when they get back in August, huh?”

His stomach clenched into a tight, heavy ball of lead inside him, although he was very careful not to let his face betray his feelings. Despite their closeness, despite that Yosuke was throwing body heat like a furnace, a sharp, distinct chill crawled up his arms and shoulders and up into his scalp. He’d been trying so hard not to think about that. Buried it deep, deep inside him like a Shadow and pretended it wasn’t there. He felt like he was going to be sick, for a moment, as he suddenly and unwillingly remembered his father’s stern silence, and his mother’s request for Yosuke and Nanako to leave the room –

_Don’t think about it. Nothing you can do. Let it go._

“Dude… you okay?” Yosuke asked, a deep frown etched across his features, drawing his mouth and his eyebrows down all at the same time. “You don’t look so good.”

Souji considered for a moment saying _no_, he _wasn’t_ okay, and he needed room to breathe before he was sick all over himself, but he didn’t. Now that he was reminded of it, forced to face up to an uncertain future that was looming closer and closer, he found that he couldn’t hold it all inside him any longer. So what he said instead was, “Yosuke… there’s something I need to tell you. About my parents.”

Yosuke looked alarmed, but didn’t speak. Souji couldn’t meet his eyes, opting instead to focus on the reflection of light in the otherwise dark, blank television screen.

“When they were here,” he began, “…when they came to see me –“

“_Goooood evening everyone!_”

Souji choked, staring wide-eyed at the TV as the screen flickered to life. Yosuke whipped his head around, his jaw dropping open at the voice that suddenly filled the room.

The picture was startlingly clear. Against a candy-pink backdrop of colourful bubbles and winged hearts and glittering stars, a girl in a sailor uniform stood smiling and winking good-naturedly at the camera. Her pigtails were piled high atop her head, and she twirled a gaudy, shimmering baton in one hand while she performed a saccharine-sweet salute with the other.

It was Nanako, without the slightest room for doubt.

“From now on, you have nothing to fear!” she proclaimed cheerfully, flashing a victory sign with her fingers. “I, Sailor Nanako, am watching over you always! I fight for _love_ and _justice_, and I will do everything in my power to keep you safe! Dear viewers, do you want to help me fight back against the sinister forces of darkness? Keeeeeep watching! Evil doesn’t stand a chance against our combined powers of _love_ and _friendship_!”

With a giggle and another playful wink, Nanako turned her back on the camera, and the screen went dark and silent once again.

“What…” Yosuke’s voice sounded thin and reedy, ready to tear at any moment. “What the _fuck_…?!”

Souji practically shoved Yosuke off of him as he scrambled to sit up and dig his phone out of his pocket. He dialed Nanako’s number at the same time that he sharply ordered, “Call Teddie!”, and then pressed the phone to his ear with a shaking hand. Shaking with what? Fear. Shock. _Anger_. Anger at himself for letting this happen, for not being able to stop it now, for not being able to stop it back _then_ \--

_”The customer you have dialed is outside their service area—“_

“Fuck!” Souji put his head down between his knees and raked his hands through his hair hard enough to pull a few strands loose. “How did this – how did she even--?!”

“I can’t reach Ted,” Yosuke said worriedly. “But – but that’s normal, right? He usually stays over on that side since he can’t live with me anymore –“

“Teddie,” Souji hissed, hands squeezing tight around his cell phone. “Teddie took her in.”

Yosuke gaped at him. “A-are you sure?! Why would he –“

“Because she _asked_ him to.” Fuck, how could he have _missed it_? She’d been spending so much time with him lately – and that time he found them in the Junes food court together – “This might not even be the first time. We have to get in there. We _have_ to get her out.”

“I know – Souji, I _know_, but _wait_\--“ Yosuke grabbed him by the arm and forced him to sit back down when he finally managed to get to his feet. “Listen to me! This is the same as it’s always been, okay? If there’s no fog, she’s not in danger. Goddammit, Souji, _listen to me!_”

Souji drew a deep breath, and forced a sharp exhale. Did that over and over, until his head stopped swimming and he could focus on Yosuke’s face in the dark, on his warm, firm voice and warmer, firmer grip on his arm.

“We have to go in through Junes, like always,” Yosuke reminded him. There was a tremor in his voice, but he didn’t let it break. “There’s nothing we can do tonight. Teddie can warp out of that place like it’s nothing – if he really took her in there, then you _know_ he’s going to be showing up at our door first thing in the morning to get us. We have to be ready.”

“God – I didn’t – when you said she wanted to go there, I didn’t realize she’d try to do it without us…”

“I know. I know, and I should have seen it, too,” said Yosuke. “But there’s no time for that now. We’ll get the others in the morning. We’ll go in there, just like we used to, and we’ll _get her back_.”

Souji nodded, feeling the panic start to recede, and cold, old-fashioned dread bleeding in to replace it. He felt lightheaded, and dropped his head between his knees again, the way he did at the hospital when getting blood drawn suddenly felt crushing and overwhelming and he needed to pass out. Yosuke settled a strong hand on his back, and stroked his hair with the other, and they sat in silence for a long time.

They didn’t make it to bed that night. Yosuke fell asleep on the couch sometime around four in the morning, and Souji sat awake, alone in the dark, staring at the shadows in the empty glass of the television screen until sunrise.


	14. Chapter 14

Exactly as predicted, Teddie was pounding frantically on their door just after nine the next morning, precisely as long as it would have taken him to get out of Junes as soon as it opened and then all the way to their apartment. He was a wreck when Yosuke opened the door for him, pale and panting and teary-eyed, and he didn’t even give him the chance to speak before the words were spilling out of him in fits and starts.

“Yosuke! Nana-chan – she’s – I, I didn’t mean for anything to happen! It was an accident! W-we were supposed to come right back out, but she—“

“Ted!” he interrupted, taking him firmly by the shoulders and dragging him over the threshold. It was an emergency to be sure, but not the kind that the neighbours needed to know about. “Calm down. It’s okay. We already know.”

“—and I _told_ her it was a bad idea, but – y-you already know?”

Yosuke nodded. “She was on the Midnight Channel last night. Me and Souji happened to see it.”

Teddie’s eyes went wide and terrified at the mention of Souji’s name, and his hands flew to Yosuke’s forearms and clamped down in a deathgrip. “S-sensei?! Is he angry?! I’ll understand if he is! I just couldn’t _do_ anything, really, I tried—!”

“No, Ted, he’s not—“

“Yes, Teddie, I _am_ angry.”

Yosuke turned and watched Souji step into the kitchen, flipping his cell phone closed with one hand and directing a flat, expressionless stare toward Teddie, who cowered a little and hugged Yosuke's arms even closer. Yosuke didn’t blame him. Souji almost never lost his temper, but he somehow managed to look about a hundred times more terrifying when he was at his calmest anyway. Not that he looked _calm_ right now, exactly. He’d hoped that they wouldn’t see a repeat of Dojima’s funeral for a long time, but the stress and lack of sleep were once again evident on Souji’s face, and it worried him. It had been so long since any of them had set foot inside the other world to fight; if Souji wasn’t up to leading them, things were going to get ugly really, really fast in there.

And maybe out _here_, too.

“Sensei,” Teddie whimpered, “i-it was an accident. I – I didn’t think she could—!”

“How did this happen?” Souji demanded. Coolly, smoothly, like he was asking Teddie where he got his shirt, or if he’d like a cup of coffee. The fear that had come close to overwhelming him last night was neatly tucked away below the placid mask, until it was safe to let it out again at a later time. Which would happen, Yosuke knew, as soon as they came home tonight, as soon as he could excuse himself to the bathroom and lock the door behind him – as soon as he was out of the sight of anybody who depended on him. But now they had work to do, and Souji was never more competent and in control than in situations where he was needed. “How long have you been taking her in there? And why didn’t you tell us before something went wrong?”

Teddie flinched and stared at the floor guiltily, but he didn’t dare avoid Souji's questions. “S-she… she’s been asking me things for a long time. I don’t look any _older_ like all of you do, so she… she wanted to know more about me, and about where I came from. I-I didn’t think it mattered if I told her! She can't get inside TVs on her own, so it should have been okay!”

“But you did take her inside.”

The guilty look deepened. “Yes… She wanted to see where I lived. She _really_ wanted to see, so I took her there. But not far! We never went in any further than the entrance hall, really!”

“_Teddie,_” Souji chastised him, not at all gently. “You know how dangerous it is in there. Why would you even think of agreeing to that?”

“Partner, look…” Yosuke jumped in, holding up a hand toward Souji in Teddie’s defense. “I’m not saying Ted did the right thing here, but honestly… he can tell where the shadows are way better than we can, _and_ he can get out way more easily. Nanako-chan was probably safer with him than with any of us, really…”

Souji redirected his icy glare from Teddie and focused it on him instead. “That’s not the point, Yosuke, and you know it,” he said, keeping his words brisk and clipped. “She shouldn’t have been anywhere near the other world in the first place.”

“But everything was fine!” Teddie protested. “We didn’t wander far, and we never saw any shadows at all! But then… but lately…”

“Did she ask you to take her to Heaven?” Souji asked bluntly.

“S-she didn’t call it that,” said Teddie. “I… I don’t think she really knew what it was, or if it was in there, but she must have guessed. She did ask me about it, the day that you came to Junes, Sensei, but I promise I didn’t tell her anything! I told her she should ask you or Yosuke about it!”

“Yeah, well, she did,” Yosuke muttered. “And now she knows for sure where it is. I guess she didn’t tell you that I said there was no way we were taking her in there?”

Teddie shook his head. “No, she didn’t talk about it at all! Then – then yesterday morning, she called me and asked if I would go in with her after school, just one more time. Just for a little while! S-so I said I would, but… when we got in there, she started to wander on her own. I tried to get her to go back to the entrance, but she wouldn’t! There wasn’t anything I could do. She wouldn’t let me get close enough to warp out with her, but I couldn’t just leave here there alone… And then she was just _gone_!” His huge blue eyes were threatening to spill over with tears, and Yosuke could practically feel his fingernails digging in through his shirt sleeves. “I’m sorry, Sensei, I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have done it, I know, but… but she was so happy when we went in there together. I just wanted to make Nana-chan happy again!”

Funny how the annoying little bear had a way of saying just the right thing to tug at your heartstrings, Yosuke thought. No matter how incredibly stupid it had been, he couldn’t fault Teddie for his reasons, not when they so closely mirrored his own feelings toward Nanako lately. As the boy stood there and fought desperately not to cry, Yosuke turned toward Souji with a pleading look on his face, trying to get him to back off a little. He remained unimpressed for a few long moments, but eventually, even his stony exterior softened somewhat.

“I know, Teddie,” Souji sighed at last. “I get it. It’s done. She’s in there now, and we need to focus on how we’re going to get her out.”

“Sounds good,” said Yosuke, exhaling heavily to at least clear the air in his own chest, if not in the room itself. He pointed at Souji’s cell phone, still clutched in his hand. “So where are we? Did you reach the others?”

Souji nodded. “Yukiko’s calling Chie, Kanji’s calling Naoto and Rise. We’ll pick up Kanji and Rise on the way, and the others will meet us there.”

“Whoa, wait, Rise-chan’s leaving soon,” Yosuke reminded him. “She’s got a schedule she needs to stick to, and it’s going to be a lot harder without her…”

“I know,” said Souji, as he began to pace the kitchen floor. Yosuke could practically see him switch over to _strategizing leader_ mode. “So we’ll only have a few days at most before she’s gone. We might even have to alternate teams to get this done fast enough, given how busy some of us are with work. Yukiko and Chie will be the hardest to excuse… and you, of course. You can’t call off work and then show up in the electronics section later that day…”

Yosuke didn’t bother to respond to that. Despite Souji playing it safe and thinking out their plan of attack ahead of time, there was no doubt in his mind that they weren’t coming out of the TV today until they’d either rescued Nanako or dropped from exhaustion.

“Teddie,” Souji said briskly, and the boy snapped to attention. “Go to Shiroku and get us some food and supplies. It’s going to be a long day in there. Meet us at Daidara’s when you’re done.”

“Y-yes sir!” Teddie squeaked.

He turned and dashed out the door, even more eager to help in any way possible than usual. When he was gone, Yosuke turned to Souji and reached for his hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

“We’ll do it,” he said, trying his best to sound confident while feeling anything but. “Don’t worry.”

Instead of nodding or shaking his head or responding at all, Souji used the grip on his hand to pull him toward himself, and then they were clutching each other tightly.

“Promise me you’ll be careful in there,” Souji murmured into his ear.

Yosuke chuckled, although he couldn’t quite muster the will or any genuine humour to really make it anything but an empty gesture. “C’mon, when have you ever had to worry about me? I seem to remember that it was _your_ ass I was constantly having to save at the last minute. So…” His smile died away on his lips, and he twisted his fingers into the fabric of Souji’s shirt, and tried hard not to think about Souji and Nanako and what he would do if he had to come back today without one or _both_ of them. Souji had to have been thinking exactly the same thing. “You be careful, too.”

When they broke apart, Souji reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of bright orange plastic glasses, and handed them to Yosuke. He’d lost track of them in the move, but trust Souji to keep tabs on these things... “Don’t forget these,” he said.

“Aw, dude…” Yosuke fiddled with the two pairs of glasses – the ones in his hand, and the ones on his face – and frowned. “This sucks. I’m gonna be blind either way!”

“Your eyes aren’t that bad. Just try them on when we get in there, and wear the ones that let you see the best.”

They slipped their shoes on, just as Kanji came barreling up the stairs to their door. As the three of them headed down to the street together, Kanji shook his head and mused aloud, “This is so fucked up. Can’t believe Nanako-chan’s got something like that inside her, too. I mean, I know she ain’t a little girl anymore, but it’s still hard to believe someone like her can have a Shadow…”

“Everyone has a Shadow,” said Souji, but it wasn’t until later that Yosuke figured out why that statement made his heart give an unpleasant little twinge.  


  


***

Going back into the other world after so long was both weird and somehow perfectly normal at the same time. It was nostalgic, that was for sure – the backlot, the flood lights, the creepy chalk outlines, the fog – but on the other hand, it was the only part of Inaba that had remained exactly the same from the last time he had seen it. He was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to be as comforting as he found it to be, but it was. This world was where he’d found his purpose for so much of that year, rescuing people and fighting alongside his friends, and he’d been _good_ at it. It was where he’d felt the most needed in his entire life, before Dojima’s house, before Souji, before Nanako, and he was strangely relieved to find it exactly as it had always been, as if just waiting here for his return.

Except for the darkened school at the end of the pathway Teddie had led them down, standing tall and in stark contrast to the ominous black and red sky. That part was new.

“She’s in there,” said Teddie, without hesitation. Neither he nor Rise needed any kind of clues or hints to track down Nanako. “And she’s not alone.”

“Teddie’s right,” said Rise, eyes concealed behind Kanzeon’s visor for a moment before she dismissed her Persona and looked up toward the top floor of the school with the rest of them. “It’s definitely a Shadow. We have to hurry!”

Souji nodded. “All right. I know it’s been a long time, but everyone try their best. We’ve done this before. You know what to do.”

As they made their preparations to go inside, Yosuke held a pair of glasses in each hand, alternating which ones he put on every few seconds to compare their effects on his vision. Teddie’s glasses let him see perfectly through the fog – to the end of his arm, if he stretched it out in front of him, and everything beyond that got increasingly more blurred and indistinct, until the red and black streaks swirling overhead bled completely into each other. His regular glasses also let him see to the end of his arm, but then the shapes of his friends disappeared into the white haze that surrounded them. This was going to be a pain either way, but blurry and unfocused was better than nothing at all, he decided, and he pocketed his own glasses in favour of Teddie’s.

“I understand your determination,” said Naoto, “but please remember that we all may have a difficult time readjusting to combat. Recklessly pushing forward and risking severe injury will not be beneficial to Nanako-chan.”

“Naoto-kun’s right,” Yukiko agreed. “Nanako-chan is depending on us. So let’s be careful, for her sake.”

“Poor Nanako-chan…” sighed Chie. “I wonder what she’s keeping inside her that could cause this to happen?”

Yosuke caught Souji’s gaze across the group, but they didn’t hold it for more than a second. They’d talked about this, last night before he’d finally fallen asleep, thinking that maybe if they could figure out the issue before they encountered the Shadow, they might be able to help Nanako accept it before it was too late. The emphasis on “love” and “justice” had been pretty clear, but Shadows had a way of twisting themselves into something even their human hosts didn’t truly understand. What was Nanako still hiding from them? More importantly, what was Nanako still hiding from _herself_?

“We’ll find that out soon enough,” Kanji said grimly. “So let’s get to it.”

They hurried inside the main doors of the school, weapons held at the ready. Yosuke clutched his knives tight enough to feel the handles imprinting on his palms, ready and eager to rush into battle with the first shadow unlucky enough to slide into their path, but the hallway on the other side of the entrance was eerily empty. It was almost eerily normal, too – windows dotting the left-hand wall, sliding classroom doors lined up one after another on the right, signs and bulletin boards tacked up in the empty spaces between. If not for the faint veil of fog further up ahead, or the glimpse of the twisted, ruinous sky he could catch from the windows, this could have been absolutely any school in Inaba. It could even have been—

“This is…” Yukiko gasped as they slowed to a halt by the shoe lockers in the foyer. “This is our middle school. This is _Nanako-chan’s_ school.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Chie. “Didn’t you guys say she looked like some kinda shoujo manga heroine when she showed up on TV? So what’s this school doing here?”

“Don’t those girls usually go to school? Like a secret identity, right?” When that remark earned Kanji nothing but sideways glances, he flushed red, waved his hands around wildly, and stammered, “N-not that I read ‘em!”

Yosuke wanted to laugh, but it wouldn’t come. It figured that, with all of their misunderstandings and difficulties with each other so far, he would have _this_ of all things in common with her. “Nanako-chan wants to be a hero, huh…?” he mumbled, mostly to himself, but he didn’t miss the flicker of Souji’s eyes in his direction.

A giggle sounded somewhere above them, light and sweet and girlish, and everyone kept quiet as they waited to hear what would follow.

“You came!” the voice called out almost musically. It was unmistakably Nanako, but there was something deeply off about it, a fake pleasantness marred by that tinge of cruelty that they had come to associate with Shadows. “Wow, and so many of you! You must really care about me. I had no idea the power of love meant so much to you! But you know, you all mean a lot to me, too. Please come and find me, so I can show you _just~ how~ much~!_”

The voice faded. Yosuke looked to Souji. The others looked to Souji, too, like they had in November all those years ago, like they always had.

“Yosuke, Chie, Yukiko – stay back with Rise, but don’t fall behind,” he ordered. “Watch our backs. We’ll switch up the front line when we get tired.”

Yosuke didn’t complain about not being on point; for one, he knew that being in the rear guard was a sign of Souji’s trust in him, in all of them, and for two, Souji had already taken off down the first hallway at a sprint, and the rest of them had no choice but to follow or be left behind.


	15. Chapter 15

Falling back into their old battle habits wasn’t easy, and as they clumsily fought their way through the first floor of the school, Souji was afraid that they’d gotten rusty enough to seriously jeopardize their rescue attempt. The very first group of shadows they encountered was faster than he remembered, faster than his body could keep up with, and they were brutally ambushed. It could have been dire, if Rise’s group hadn’t rounded the corner just in time to save them. They were more cautious after that, but still not up to the standards they had perfected the last time they had been here, chasing after Adachi.

Souji tried hard not to make his frustration with their diminished skill level apparent. The others were doing their best, and it wasn’t like he was doing any better, so there was no point in harping on it. This was going to be hard enough without letting everyone get demoralized right away.

It wasn’t just the physical fighting that was difficult, either; calling his Personas was acutely more strenuous now than it had been back then. They were exactly like his Shadow: even though they would never appear in the real world, he was aware of their presence, and he’d grown used to the way he could feel them lurking just out of reach in the back of his mind. It used to be that he would sense them clearly – Sraosha’s guidance when he mediated arguments, Scathach’s approval when he looked inward and followed his instincts, Vishnu’s delight when he reached out to others with understanding and compromise in his heart – but in time he had learned to adjust to them, and they’d faded to the edges of his awareness like a kind of white noise, until there was virtually no difference between them and Personas in the psychological sense, the masks that everyone assumed on a daily basis. Consciously bringing them out again in battle was requiring a tremendous amount of effort and concentration, like it had when he had first called upon Izanagi all those years ago, and that worried him. It would get easier with time, he knew, but they had so little of that to spare…

They found the stairs on the other side of a heavy pair of fire doors, and proceeded to the next floor, filled with a mingled sense of urgency and trepidation that rippled through the group almost palpably. At the top of the stairs, Nanako’s newly warped and taunting voice called out to them once again.

“Not getting tired, are you?” she giggled. “Spreading love and justice is hard work! Keep trying! I know you can do it!”

“Souji-san,” Naoto said after the hallway was quiet again, grasping his elbow lightly before he could race ahead. “What did you tell Nanako-chan about your meeting with Adachi?”

Souji threw a quick glance over his shoulder, but Yosuke and his group were only just now ascending the stairs, too far out of earshot to have heard the name. “Nothing,” he answered quickly, eager to cut the topic short before they were overheard. “Is there a problem?”

“Nanako-chan’s apparent fixation on ‘justice’…” she murmured. “Do you think Detective Satou was right? Does she know more about what happened to her father than she’s letting on?”

The possibility was unsettling. To be truthful, Souji had been hoping that the justice connection had been a coincidence, or at least tangentially related to the handful of his Personas that took to Nanako especially warmly – Archangel, Power, Principality, and so forth. The other possibility, the one that Naoto voiced, had been one he’d been firmly hoping against. “Like Kanji said,” he sighed, “we’ll probably find out soon enough.”

“But if that’s the case, were you perhaps too quick in trusting Adachi’s—“

“Not now,” Souji snapped, without really meaning to, but he could see Yosuke’s curious expression as his group drew nearer and wanted to end the discussion immediately. “After we get her back.”

They struggled on in this manner for another five floors, tearing through seemingly endless swarms of shadows that chased them down a labyrinth of identical hallways and poured out of the doorways of cramped classrooms. On the fourth floor, the light streaming in through the windows had faded as though the sun were setting, tinting the halls and the distant fog a deep orange, and signaling a change in the toughness of the shadows that appeared from that point onward. On the seventh, only the eerie, shifting red light of the sky was visible through the windows in the hallways and the classrooms, and every patch of floor in between was plunged into pitch blackness.

“Big bro,” came Nanako’s voice again when they reached the top of the stairs, and Souji held out a hand to bring everyone to a halt. This time it _was_ her, really her, and not her Shadow. “I never meant for… It was supposed to be… I didn’t want that to happen! You have to believe me!” The voice faded, leaving behind the scratching, scuffling noises of shadows further ahead where he couldn’t see, and a fresh sense of fear that gripped him anew.

“We’re still not there,” said Teddie, his voice shaking and betraying his fatigue, “but we’re getting close!”

“Be careful,” Souji urged the others, when the rear group had caught up with them. “It’s dark up here, so we won’t know there’s a shadow ahead until we trip over it. Rise, try your best to pinpoint them for us.”

Rise nodded slowly in understanding. “Okay…”

She didn’t sound particularly alert either. Souji glanced at each of them in turn, feeling his heart sink at the sight of seven worn, tired faces, and his own limbs ache in protest at the prospect of fighting through another floor without rest. Dammit, they were _close_… couldn’t they hold out just a little longer?

“Souji-kun,” said Yukiko, her eyes hesitant and fixed on some invisible point down the hall, “I don’t think we can go much further today. We’ve all had a lot taken out of us...”

“It isn’t safe,” Chie agreed.

_Just a little longer…_ Souji looked to Rise again. “Rise, how far is she?”

She shrugged helplessly, worry and exhaustion getting the better of her. “I can’t _tell_… I don’t know. Ninth or tenth floor, probably.”

“Then we’ll make this the last one,” Souji announced. “If we have to fight Nanako-chan’s Shadow, we will, and the closer we get today, the less we’ll have to get through tomorrow before we do that.”

“What’s the big deal if we do this floor tomorrow instead of tonight?” Yosuke asked, and Souji narrowly avoided outright glaring at him and this new challenge. “Look at this place! We can’t see a thing, and we’re going to get jumped the second we turn a corner. They’ll completely wipe us out with the state we’re in right now. I think we need to back off, partner. Nanako-chan can hang on one more day.”

This time, Souji couldn’t keep his face still. He felt it twist in anger, as though he were no longer in control of his body, and he growled, “In case you’ve forgotten, that’s my _sister_ up there waiting for us to come rescue her. And you want me to leave her there alone just because you’re _tired_?”

Yosuke blinked, eyebrows knitted together uncertainly above the frames of his glasses. “Dude, she’ll be okay. We’ve taken a whole lot longer to rescue people before, and they were always fine, remember? There’s no fog in the weather forecast any time soon, so let’s—”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Souji snarled. “You never had to wait to be rescued. You thought it was terrible having to listen to your Shadow for two whole minutes? Think of what Nanako-chan must be going through right now! You have no idea what she—“

“Neither do you!” Yosuke cut across him. “What the hell was with that ‘everyone has a Shadow’ stuff this morning, anyway? _You_ have the _least_ idea of all of us what she’s going through, Souji, so don’t try to pull that on us. The rest of us know what it feels like, and we know she can take it. I don’t like it either, but if the alternative is getting ourselves killed, then Nanako-chan can handle it while we rest for one night.”

Naoto cleared her throat awkwardly, and the sound reminded Souji that their friends were gathered around them, glancing back and forth between the two of them with wide, worried eyes as they argued. He grit his teeth together to hold back a scathing reply, and that strange sort of darkness rippled inside him again, like it had on the night he had questioned Adachi. _Funny how they all depend on you, need you so_ badly, _until you tell them something they don’t want to hear…_ But Souji held that unpleasant thought back, too. He blamed it on the fog – it was unusually thick on this floor, heavy and oppressive and hard to shake off. If he could just get a moment to think clearly…

“What do the rest of you think?” he asked at length, when he had regained his calm.

Uncertain looks were exchanged around the group, wordless communications to try and discern what the others were thinking before they answered. Kanji was the first to speak up.

“It definitely ain’t easy, bein’ left with nothin’ but your Shadow for company. Not knowin’ whether anyone’s comin’ for you, or if you’ll ever get out of this place...” He nodded at Souji. “I can still fight. If you’re goin’ after Nanako-chan, I’m goin’ with you.”

Yukiko looked unhappy, but said, “I can still fight, and heal, too. I can’t let you go alone.”

“Yukiko, no,” said Chie sternly, as she whirled on Souji. “Yosuke’s right. What’s gotten into you? We can’t afford to be playing around like this! Any other time, we would have called it a day _long ago_. You know that. We need to do this like always!”

Souji rubbed at his forehead, irritably. It was beginning to throb painfully in time with his heartbeat.

“I’m going too, Sensei,” said Teddie. “It’s my fault this happened to Nana-chan, and I’m going to bring her back no matter what!”

“You’re going to get yourselves killed!” Rise protested with a stamp of her foot. “Stop being ridiculous!”

“We did agree to leave when things got dire,” said Naoto slowly. “But that being said, if you’re serious about going, then I cannot let you go without me in good conscience.”

“It’s settled, then.” Souji turned to Yosuke again, whose face was darker and angrier than he had seen it in recent memory, but he was determined not to be discouraged. Yosuke might be furious with him now, but he would understand in the long run. He had to. “You three can go back if you want, but we’re going on ahead. We’re not leaving Nanako-chan in here one more second than we have to. I’m not losing someone else important to me.”

“Important to you…?” Yosuke echoed in disbelief. “Dude, _what about us?!_”

Souji was stunned into silence, unable to think of a response, especially not when he could hear the unspoken _”me”_ in addition to _”us”_ at the end of that sentence. Shame coloured his cheeks as he looked around the group’s worried faces one more time, and then quickly avoided their eyes, knowing from the sick little drop of his stomach that Yosuke was right. What was he doing? Why was he insisting on going forward, when every calm and rational nerve in his body was telling him it was the wrong thing to do? He might be able to save Nanako today, if he pushed them hard enough, but what good would it be for one of them to be injured or killed in the process? Nanako wouldn’t want that at all…

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He felt faint, and pressed the heel of his hand into his eye as the pounding inside his head intensified, and the sickness in his stomach spread upward, tightening his chest and raising the hairs on the back of his neck. “I don’t know what…”

_What’s the point of being a leader if you can’t even get them to follow you? This isn’t a democracy – you lead, they follow, everyone lives. If they’re going to make you do this shit, then they’re going to do it your way._

“No,” Souji said aloud, but it was already too late. The connection he had been trying so hard to re-establish with his Personas flickered and faded and finally blinked out in his mind, and the sudden absence sent terror lancing through him. The fog in the darkened hallway seemed to thicken even further, so thick it might have been a poisonous cloud, and the irrational fear of choking on it seized him so suddenly that he almost failed to hear the slow, deliberate sound of approaching footsteps from the other end of the hall.

“Souji…!” Yosuke gripped his shoulder hard, bringing him momentarily back to his senses. When he turned and followed his gaze, however, he felt as though he had been knocked clear out of them again.

He saw himself, stepping out of the darkness of the hallway and into a patch of light beneath one of the large windows, his figure cast in the hellish red glow of the ruined sky. “I don’t get it,” said the Shadow, one hand tucked casually into its pocket as it regarded him lazily. “Why am I putting up with this? None of them understand what a pain in the ass this hero business is, do they? If they’re going to make me play leader again, then they can either follow my orders or they can sit down and _shut the fuck up_.”

Even with the fog disorienting him, turning icy and seeming to seep right into his bones, Souji knew this game well enough not to fall into its trap. He kept quiet, choosing not to deny the Shadow’s words. It was cruel, and twisted, and ugly, but it was _him_. If he could just endure it, just for a little while…

“What a pain,” the Shadow growled, its hands curling tightly into fists by its sides. “They’ll whine and bitch and moan and second-guess everything I do, but who do they always run to when they’ve got a problem? _Souji can do it. Souji can fix everything!_” It threw back its head and laughed, mirthlessly. “How pathetic can you get? How hard can it be for everyone else to handle their own damn problems for once?”

“Get out of the way,” Souji ordered, with all the calm and authority he could muster. “Nanako-chan needs me. You don’t want anything to happen to her any more than I do, so _move_.”

His Shadow smirked, evidently pleased that it had drawn a reaction out of him. “’Nanako-chan needs me’? Yeah, there’s a surprise. Maybe she should take a number. That’s all it really takes to get me to come running, after all – someone _needs me_. But forget what _I_ need, right? Forget that _I_ don’t have any idea how to raise a kid, not when my own parents set such stellar examples for me. Sure Mom, I’ll throw a funeral for my uncle without your help, no problem! Oh, don’t worry about showing up or anything – you’ve always done such a great job of disappearing when I really needed you. I wouldn’t want to ruin your _perfect record_.”

The bitterness in the Shadow’s voice surprised even him. It was true that he’d been disappointed and angry with his parents over Dojima’s funeral, but had it really been sticking with him all this time? Was his resentment over a somewhat lonely and nomadic upbringing really so deeply entrenched inside him, pushed so far down and away that this was the only way he could acknowledge it? A weird sense of shame swept over him. He didn’t want his friends to see any of this. They trusted him to be strong, trusted him not to fall prey to the workings of this world, and in return he was showing them such shameful, childish inner thoughts…

“You did a good thing for your uncle, and for Nanako-chan,” said Yukiko, standing at his shoulder. He was confused for a moment as to why she had spoken up, until he remembered that of course she would understand his hidden desire to abandon his forced responsibilities. “You did that for them, even though you didn’t have to. Don’t ever doubt that.”

The Shadow scoffed at her. “And that’s all that matters, I guess. The great Souji Seta did another good deed. And good deeds are their own reward, right?” It lashed out suddenly, slamming its fist against one of the classroom doors, and a loud _crack_ resounded in the narrow hallway as it buckled under the blow. “Fuck that! I drop _everything_ for them, and nobody even asks me if this is what I really want!”

His Shadow wasn’t looking at him anymore. Its piercing yellow eyes were fixed somewhere behind him, and Souji didn’t have to turn around to know it was looking at Yosuke.

“So what if I had it good in the city? So what if I had a life there? And let me tell you, that life was _great_. Top of my class, ready to get out into the world and really do something—“ The Shadow smirked and cocked an eyebrow. “Getting laid on a regular basis. It really couldn’t have been any better. And then… how did he put it? ‘Because of one stupid mistake, I got dragged out to the sticks to do a thankless job’. Hah! Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Souji felt his mask of calm slip just a little at the indirect mention of Adachi. Everything else he could handle, but this... He wasn’t ready to face this, not now…

“You don’t like that, hmm?” the Shadow asked, turning its gaze back to Souji with a malicious grin stretched across its pale face. Even if the momentary lapse had gone unnoticed by his friends, his other self saw and seized upon it immediately. At the same time, Souji noticed with growing alarm the way it had suddenly stopped referring to itself as though they were the same entity. “Face it: you’re just like him, and you _hate_ it, but you’ve always known, always been afraid…”

“Stop it,” Souji whispered hoarsely, but the dam had broken, and the Shadow wouldn’t be silenced.

“You’re too good for this place, and too good for them,” it hissed in delight. “Don’t you wish they’d leave you alone? Don’t you wish they’d just stop needing you for five minutes? I _know_ you do. Hell, you’ll even let yourself get pushed around in bed if it means you don’t have to do everything yourself for once, huh?” Souji held his breath, sure for one dizzying moment that his Shadow was about to go into some very uncomfortable details, but it continued on without elaborating. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought that his own sigh of relief might have covered up a quieter one issued behind him. “Even your uncle couldn’t get his act together on his own. Of _course_ he was waiting on you to help him. If only you could have spared him just a little of your time, maybe he wouldn’t have had to die!”

“Stop it…!” he begged, squeezing his eyes shut. All around him, his friends were starting to speak all at once – _Sensei, don’t say it; we might need to fight; get ready; hang on, partner!_ \-- but he was trying so hard to hold himself together that he could just barely hear them. “I… I didn’t mean to—“

“Ohh, I know all about that,” said the Shadow, its crazed grin widening as it sensed his weakness. “I wonder what Nanako-chan will say when she finds out? That the big brother she adores so much didn’t lift a goddamn finger when her father needed him? Fuck, that’s cold. Even if you hate it when others cling to you, couldn’t you at least have deigned to help your own _family_?”

Something broke inside him, and then he couldn’t have denied his Shadow even if he wanted to. The words wouldn’t come. He regretted every time he’d ever imagined that facing his Shadow outside the TV world was anything at all like facing it inside, regretted ever thinking that he truly understood what his friends had suffered. It was a hundred times worse. Thinking something in private was nothing compared to having it laid out on display in the worst way possible for others to hear, because it wasn't just _him_ it was hurting. But any resistance, the slightest hint of denial, and the lanky, harmless-looking creature in front of them would transform into something powerful and terrible that would undoubtedly tear him and his closest friends limb from limb. He couldn’t let that happen. Nanako – Nanako needed him. Nanako needed _them_…

And when that thought flickered to life in his mind, the fog that had settled over his body and brain cleared a little, and he knew what he had to do.

“You’re right,” Souji admitted quietly. “I’m tired of feeling like everyone depends on me to pick up the pieces. Things _were_ good for me where I was, and I didn’t want to leave. I was really resentful of my parents … and even of my uncle, for being careless and forcing all of this responsibility on me. I always told myself I’d do anything for Nanako-chan, but this time… it was too much all at once. Regardless of what I actually did, deep down I was being incredibly selfish...”

“That’s right,” said his Shadow. “While everyone was busy mourning your uncle, you were mourning the life you lost, weren’t you? You were actually _jealous_ of Nanako-chan for being allowed to be weak. You’re disgusting. But hey, what can you do? You’ve been thinking it all along: _Nanako-chan needs me. There’s no one else._ It’s not like you can depend on anyone’s help, so it’s all up to you, right?”

But Souji firmly shook his head. “No. That’s not true. That’s _exactly_ what I need to do. It’s what I should have been doing from the beginning. You’re right that I’ve been thinking that way – thinking that it’s all up to me and I can’t rely on anybody – but I’ve been going about it all wrong. It isn’t one-sided like that. When someone asks for my help, it’s not just me that needs to do something about it; it’s the two of us. So it isn’t just me that Nanako-chan’s depending on right now. She needs _all_ of us to work together, or we won’t be able to help her.” That was true, Souji thought, of both their rescue mission and of the new life they’d been trying so hard to piece together since Dojima’s death. “She needs to fight and be strong, and we need to stand behind her and catch her if she can’t do it.”

“That’s nice,” said the Shadow, looking painfully bored under the window light. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you’re bitter and angry – and just like _him_ when you get down to it.”

“Of course I’m angry,” Souji countered. “I was comfortable before, and now I’ve been dropped into this new role and I have _no idea_ what I’m supposed to be doing. Who wouldn’t be angry? But I can’t change anything that’s happened, and I have to accept that I’m exactly where I need to be, where I’m _needed_, and that’s not a bad thing. And that,” he said with a smile, “makes me nothing like him at all.”

The Shadow scoffed again, at him this time, and folded its arms across its chest in annoyance. “Yeah, yeah. What a goddamn _saint_ you are.”

“You would know. You’re me, and I’m you.”

Deeply irritated though his Shadow was, Souji thought he saw a flash of approval in those shining golden eyes as it nodded and vanished from sight. Almost instantly, he felt the presences of his Personas again in the back of his mind, and the warmth and familiarity they provided him drove out the remainder of the cold, oppressive fog.

A collective sigh of relief rushed around the group as soon as it was gone, and Souji could only imagine that his friends were as afraid of fighting his Shadow as he had been of accidentally unleashing it on them. Feeling more than a little ashamed and guilty, he turned to address them.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I let it get out of hand.”

Chie smacked him on the arm. “You jerk! My knees felt like rubber. I thought we were as good as dead!”

“Yeah. Figures if anyone could talk his way out of fighting his Shadow, it’d be you,” said Kanji.

They dissolved into broken fits of nervous laughter, the slightly crazed kind that sometimes followed panic and surviving a terrifying experience. Every muscle in his body ached, but he couldn’t stop, and it wasn’t until he found himself needing to lean heavily on Yosuke’s shoulder for support that they began to wind down.

“We need to get you out of here,” said Yosuke, as he looped an arm around his waist. “No arguments this time, okay?”

Souji’s smile fell, slowly, as he recalled the fight that had prompted his Shadow’s appearance, and he could not meet Yosuke’s eyes as he murmured another apology to the group.

“We understand,” Rise assured him. “I’m just glad you came to your senses.”

“I’ll take him home,” said Yosuke. “Let’s rest up and come back tomorrow. Then we’ll save Nanako-chan for sure.”

Souji heard them agree to that proposal, although his fatigue was so sudden and so great that he couldn’t quite manage to join them. When they were ready, Teddie teleported them back to the main doors of the school, and they began the long trek back to the entrance hall and the televisions there that would lead them home.

“I’m sorry,” Souji mumbled again. Resting his weight against Yosuke made them slower than the others, and they lagged behind a little as the bright lights of the backlot came into view up ahead. “For saying those things. I told you to be careful, and it would have been my fault if you’d been hurt…”

“I know,” said Yosuke. “I get it. Some of it was your Shadow, too, making things worse. I know how it is, dude.” Souji couldn’t see his face, as he stared down at the floor and concentrated on not tripping over his own feet, but he could hear the way his voice lightened as he added, “But if you pull that shit tomorrow, I swear to god I’ll have Nanako-chan put you in make-up while you’re sleeping.”

Souji chuckled a little.

“Honestly, you must have cut another ten years off my lifespan,” Yosuke sighed, and it seemed to Souji that they had slowed down even more behind their friends as they walked. “Your Shadow coming out like that.”

“Didn’t think you could fight me?” Souji asked, but Yosuke shook his head.

“That’s not what I’m talking about; I knew you’d be able to handle it. I just mean, when it said that stuff about… pushing you around…” Yosuke’s voice was thick with embarrassment. “And when it _looked_ at me like that, I thought for sure it was going to say something about us, you know? Like,_ By the way, when are you going to tell everyone you’re in love with him?_ I still can’t believe it didn’t.”

“Of course it didn’t,” said Souji, resting his head against Yosuke’s shoulder. “I never doubted that for a second.”


	16. Chapter 16

Yosuke woke early the next morning, as his job had been steadily disciplining him to do, and lay in bed listening to the quiet signs of life that floated up through the open window from the street down below. It was Monday, and he was waking up to start another week along with the rest of the shopping district, albeit mired in a wholly different type of dismay than the kind that usually accompanied Monday mornings.

Yesterday had been too close for comfort. They needed to do better today.

Slowly, his movements clumsy and heavy as his body struggled to wake up, he turned over onto his side and saw Souji still sleeping peacefully next to him, his breathing deep and even, his limbs tangled up in the sheets, his lips parted slightly. Dead to the world. Yosuke sympathized with him; he’d slept like that after facing his own Shadow, too. It had been the deepest, most restful sleep he could ever remember having, partly due to the stress of exerting himself in the other world, but mostly, he suspected, because of how _whole_ he’d felt after accepting what he’d been trying so hard to pretend didn’t exist.

He shivered a little in the morning cold and curled in on himself, pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and up to his nose, and watched Souji sleep for a while longer. There was work to be done today, but knowing what Souji had just gone through made him reluctant to wake him prematurely. He’d been as blindsided by its appearance as Yosuke had been by his own, completely unprepared to face the worst part of himself in front of all his friends – and yet he’d managed. It figured the one guy who wasn’t supposed to have a Shadow at all was the one who’d been able to come to terms with it the most easily. Except…

_Everyone has a Shadow._

Yosuke grimaced, and turned his face into his pillow. How could he have been so stupid? Of course Souji had a Shadow. There was no one in the world who didn’t have some part of themselves they wished they could erase, even someone as – open was the wrong word; direct, maybe – as Souji. Thinking about it now made him cringe at his own foolishness, but he used to admire how _strong_ Souji was, to have braved the other world and to have come out of it psychologically unscathed, like not having anything at all to hide was something laudable, something _normal_, and it was the rest of them who were screwed up. Even long after he’d accepted his own darker aspects and his desire to be recognized by Souji as an equal, he’d envied that part of him. That strength was one of the things that had drawn Yosuke to him in the first place, first as friends, and later as partners in every sense of the word.

But even after all this time together, even knowing full well that Souji switched masks with such alarming skill and frequency that it sometimes terrified him to think that maybe he’d never seen the real him at all, he’d still missed it. He’d carelessly assumed that just because Souji had been in control of his Shadow _once_ that it would always be the case. And to make matters worse, the Shadow had appeared long after Souji had acquired his Personas, which meant that whatever inner forces were responsible for triggering a Shadow’s transformation into a Persona, the process was definitely reversible. Maybe that was why he was more apprehensive than usual this morning about the prospect of going back in there. They couldn’t afford another dangerous hurdle like that…

He supposed he could have gotten out of bed at some point, made an early start of what promised to be an arduous day, maybe made breakfast or done any number of productive things. But in the end, all he did was move a little closer to Souji’s sleeping form, and drape an arm around his waist, and press their foreheads together until the sun shone stronger through their bedroom window and Souji’s eyes fluttered open at last and slowly focused on Yosuke’s face, only inches from his own as he watched him sleep.

“Dude,” Souji mumbled, “you’re so creepy.”

Yosuke would have laughed, if it had been any other morning.

  


  
***   


 

The seventh floor was as dangerous as they’d feared, with shadows lurking around every dark corner and hardly ever venturing into the patches of light that stretched across the corridors where they might be seen. They stuck closer together than usual as they advanced through the eerily silent halls, Rise and Teddie whispering warnings to the group whenever they began to draw near to an enemy, or when one was lurking just beyond a door they were about to open. But the darkness had the added benefit of blinding the shadows too, and as long as they were quiet and careful, they could manage to kill some, and sneak around the others.

Still, Yosuke grew anxious. They were moving at a snail’s pace, and it was frustrating, but it was the safe thing to do and he knew they had no other choice if they didn’t want to be taken by surprise. No, the thing that worried him was how damn hard it was to _see_ in here, and not just because of the distant fog or the poor lighting…

Every time Rise hissed a warning ahead to Souji and he replied with a hushed, “I see it,” dropping his stance a little lower and gripping the hilt of his sword a little tighter, Yosuke peered as hard as he could into the darkness that stretched out before them. But no matter how hard he tried, it was no use – as long as he was wearing Teddie’s glasses instead of his prescription pair, the faint outlines of the shadows as they moved across the floor remained completely invisible to him. He was forced to hang back as his friends took down the shadows, lest he accidentally stumble into the creatures’ paths and attract unwanted attention, and Souji’s sympathetic looks did nothing to make him feel any better about it.

_Please let there be only one floor of this,_ he prayed fervently, as Rise announced that the stairs were just ahead. He despised being useless in the best of situations, but he especially couldn’t stand it at a time like this, when someone he loved was depending on him. More than one someone, in fact. He couldn’t let Souji down, either.

As they ascended to the eighth floor, up toward light and heat, Yosuke dared to feel optimistic for a moment – at least until they climbed a little higher, and then he quickly realized that something was wrong. It was too bright, and too hot, even from halfway down the staircase, and the deathly silence of the previous floor was gradually giving way to dull roaring and crackling sounds. When they reached the top of the stairs, the singular source of all these things became immediately apparent, to their horror and dismay.

The corridor was on fire – to put it mildly. It would be more accurate to say it was _ablaze_, rife with thick, black, acrid smoke, and flames that lined the walls and flickered eagerly at their approach. A thin path in the middle of the hallway just wide enough for them to walk through single file was the only area untouched by the fire, and even then the way forward was partially obstructed by debris and fallen support beams. It was hellish to behold, and after the shock of it had passed, Yosuke’s heart sank to remember that all of this had been born from Nanako’s thoughts.

Before they could move on, a scream pierced the smoke-thickened air, followed by high-pitched, wailing cries for help that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“Nanako-chan!” Chie cried and started forward, but Rise quickly grabbed her by the arm.

“It isn’t her!” she said firmly. “It’s the Shadow!”

They strained their ears to hear above the cracking and popping of the inferno, and a moment later the cry came again, disembodied and emanating from somewhere above them.

“Dad!” Nanako’s sobs barely carried at all in the heavy, congested air. “Dad, I’m scared! Where are you?! _Don’t leave me!_”

Yosuke felt his eyes prickle as he covered his nose and mouth. Even if it was only a trick, just the Shadow toying with them, just _thoughts_ and not reality, hearing Nanako so painfully distressed made him feel physically ill. Before anyone could do or say or think anything, Souji turned and ushered them all back down onto the stairway, into the darkness and out of range of the oppressive heat and poisonous smoke clouds.

“Oh my god, Nanako-chan,” Yukiko whispered, her eyes red and watery in a way that, Yosuke suspected from his experience just a moment ago, had only a little to do with the smoke.

“You’re sure she’s not on this floor?” Souji asked Rise urgently.

She took a moment to stand back and call Kanzeon out, and when the Persona vanished again, she nodded. “Positive. I think she’s on the next one, but that was definitely not the real Nanako-chan just now. She’s not in danger from the fire.”

“We can’t rule out the possibility that it’s already spread to the next floor,” said Naoto. “We should hurry.”

Souji cursed, his shoulders slumping as he looked up toward the smoke billowing above them. “I don’t want to take you guys up there, but… we have to go through. There’s no other way around it.”

“We’ll be okay,” Yosuke promised. “We might get a bit toasted, but we’ll manage.”

He nodded. “All right. Everybody stay low to the ground, and try not to breathe the smoke. If you can cover your face with something, do it. Teddie, stay right behind me – use Kamui to do what you can about the flames so we can get through. Chie, same for you, but stay in the back, make sure we don’t get trapped from behind. Yukiko, stay with Rise – Amaterasu should give you some protection from the heat, so I want you to keep close to her.”

“Got it,” they all confirmed, one after another.

“Yosuke,” said Souji, turning to him, “whatever you do, _do not_ use Susano-O. One wrong blast of wind up there and we could all be dead, so physical attacks only.”

Yosuke scowled. Great. First he was blind as a bat, and now this. Was he imagining things, or was this entire school out to get him? Instead of complaining, however, he kept quiet and nodded his compliance.

“Naoto, Kanji, same for you. We don’t want any spells rebounding on us or any electricity helping to start new fires. Keep your heads down, and let’s go.”

One after another, they filed up the stairs and into the burning corridor, crouching low, jackets pulled over their heads and shirt collars covering their noses like masks, regardless of how little it helped. Yosuke nearly choked again on the thick, dry air, but he hurried on, staying just ahead of Chie as she called upon Suzuka Gongen over and over to fight back the encroaching flames.

Sweat rolled down his ash-dusted face and made his shirt stick to his back unpleasantly, but he pressed onward with the others, eyes glued to the floor to make sure he didn’t misstep along the way. Whether from the smoke or from some hazy, visual trick of the fire’s intense heat, keeping his eyes focused was even more difficult up here than it had been down in the previous floor’s darkness. The urge to reach out and grab hold of Kanji’s coat sleeve to anchor himself was strong, but the twin desires to maintain his pride and also not to be punched in the face were even stronger.

“Ooh, if we survive this I’m going to seriously harm that bear!” Chie grumbled behind him. “Taking Nanako-chan into such a dangerous place. What was he thinking?!”

Yosuke half-turned back to retort that, technically, their current predicament was entirely of Nanako’s creation, but thought better of it at the last second and faced forward again. As he did, he misjudged the distance between the floor and his foot for a moment, and accidentally stepped a little too far off the path and onto a floorboard that creaked ominously underneath his weight. He froze, and Chie almost slammed into his back.

“Hey, be careful!” she hissed at him. “And sheesh, don’t step there! It’s all rotten…”

“Guys,” he called ahead nervously, hurrying to catch up to Kanji, “let’s uh… let’s pick up the pace a little?”

Kanji turned around fully, causing him to narrowly avoid smashing his nose against his chest. Yosuke thought he was about to be chewed out for his suggestion, until he saw that everyone ahead of them had also turned around.

“No good this way,” said Kanji. “Dead end.”

“There was a door back the way we came,” said Chie helpfully. “Let’s try that one.”

They backtracked, Chie suddenly in front and working harder than ever to fight the blaze, until they came to a door they had passed while she’d been speaking to Yosuke. She stood off to one side of it, Suzuka Gongen out and ready to strike should anything be waiting on the other side, and nodded to Yosuke, who was pleased at finally being able to _do_ something, even something as stupid as opening a door. He tested the handle first, finding it hot but not unbearable to touch, and then grasped it firmly and pulled.

“No –“ Rise called out suddenly, but nowhere near in time to stop him. “No, wait!”

The door slid open easily, and a lot of things happened at once.

Even after all this time, Yosuke was faster than any of the others, and he was quick enough to dodge the burst of flame that exploded from the room the instant the door was open, fueled by the fresh source of oxygen in the hallway. What he wasn’t able to dodge, primarily because he couldn’t _see it_ properly through the fire and the haze and those _damn glasses_ that were no good to him, was the shadow that lunged out from behind a burning wooden desk and slammed itself hard against his chest.

The breath was knocked from him with that single impact, and he stumbled blindly backward into the corridor until his back hit the window on the opposite wall. Desperately trying to keep his balance and get away from the flames, he stepped down hard with all of his weight on the weakened floorboards, which creaked and groaned and _bent_ underneath him –

And with the crash of the collapsing floor and the screams of his friends still ringing loudly in his ears, he fell.

 

  
***   


 

_It was hot that day, hotter than it had been all year, but they had fans and cool drinks and watermelon, and it didn’t really get any better than that. They all ate and talked and laughed together until the warm summer sun dipped out of sight behind the houses that lay beyond the backyard fence and turned the evening sky a brilliant, fiery orange, and then all too soon, it was time to go home._

_“Remember,” a much younger Nanako chirped at him, “we’re going to the beach next year. You promised!”_

_Yosuke pulled his shoes the rest of the way on, crouched down so he could be at eye-level with her, and gave her his biggest, brightest smile. “Don’t worry, Nanako-chan. I won’t forget. And I’ll make sure this guy won’t either!”_

_Souji smiled at them, leaning lazily against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest, exuding an almost feline contentment in his summer evening lethargy. “I won’t forget,” he promised sincerely._

_Nanako turned to Souji and hugged him tightly around the middle, as if she could weigh him down enough that he wouldn’t be able to leave as long as she didn’t let go. “You’ll really come back next year?” she asked in her tiniest, most hopeful voice. “No matter what?”_

_“Of course he will!” Yosuke assured her as he stood up again. “He’ll always come back. I mean, how could he stay away? He’s got us, right?”_

_When he turned his good-humoured smile toward Souji, he found him already looking his way, an odd, thoughtful little expression on his face for the briefest of moments before he was smiling, too._

_“No matter what,” Souji confirmed, and the promise was sealed._

  


  
***   


  
The sound of scuffling and scraping at the classroom door reached his ears as Yosuke carefully opened his eyes to his dimly-lit surroundings. It was only because of the firelight streaming down through the hole he’d made in the ceiling that he could see anything at all, and even then, the details of the classroom were blurry and heavily obscured by the smoke. But no, it wasn’t just smoke – it was fog, too. His glasses were broken, cracked clean across both lenses in the fall. There was little doubt in his mind that his real pair, tucked away in his pocket, had suffered the same fate.

He couldn’t move. His lower body was buried under heavy wooden beams that used to be part of the ceiling – the floor, he reminded himself, the floor he’d fallen through – and his upper body hurt everywhere. He winced and raised his arms a little, but they were trembling and feeble with shock, unable to move anything but the lightest chunks of the debris that pinned him to the floor. He was injured, immobile, unable to see anything but that single bright hole above him and a blur of dark shapes that he _prayed_ were nothing but desks and bookshelves, and the rattling at the door only grew louder.

He closed his eyes tight, and begged his Persona to help him.

  


  
***   


 

  
_He tended to sleep late when he spent the night with Souji, with no sound in the empty house these days to wake him. Sometimes when he used to sleep over after late-night study sessions, Nanako would wake them with a soft knock on the door and a proud announcement that breakfast was ready, but not this time. This time it was just the two of them, one waking every hour or so to find the other still asleep, and then dozing off again just as the other repeated the process. It was by chance that he opened his eyes that morning in late November to find Souji already awake, curled up on his side and watching him sleep from his half of the pillow._

_“Dude,” Yosuke mumbled, rubbing a hand over his face, “you’re so creepy.”_

_Souji smiled, for the first time in days._

  


  
***   


  
Yosuke jerked awake again. No. No, no, no, if he passed out now he would die. End of story. With strength borrowed from desperation, he forced his arm to sweep out in an arc at his side, biting back a cry of pain as the motion wrenched his shoulder. He felt around blindly, searching for one of his knives or at least a sharp piece of wood he could use to defend himself, and put his hand down in something wet and clumpy like waterlogged sand. With a disgusted grunt, he yanked his hand back and brought it close to his face to examine it.

Some sort of dark, oily, powdery residue clung to his fingers. Wiping it off on his shirt, he turned his head and looked for the source, and saw it. What was left of the shadow that had lunged for him lay in a wet pile beneath a broken beam.

He laughed until he was lightheaded, even though it hurt like a bitch to do so. Not how he ordinarily would have chosen to kill something, but…

  


  
***   


  
_Rage and hurt and hatred set each and every one of his nerves on fire as he stood above the man who cowered in the dark corner of the hospital room. This man, this_ monster_ had been responsible for so much of their collective pain over the past year, and it would be nothing, absolutely nothing at all for them to shove his body into that waiting television screen and put a stop to everything._

_No one would ever even need to know._

_But as they argued over what to do with the killer now that they’d finally cornered him, Yosuke saw the doubtful, worried look in their leader’s calm grey eyes, the same look he’d turned toward all of them and probably a dozen others during his time in Inaba. The same look that had made Yosuke feel like he_ mattered_ to someone, like he was more than just an afterthought, first and foremost in someone’s heart and mind for once. The anger and jealousy that blossomed from seeing Souji turn an understanding look like that toward the worthless fucking_ scumbag_ that had _murdered Nanako_ sank in his guts like something rotten, and then he snapped, and they had their first real fight in front of everyone._

_Yosuke never did apologize for what he almost did that night. Even now he could hardly stand to think about how wrong he’d been; the shame was far too unbearable. But Souji had never once called him on it, and he would never know how grateful Yosuke was for that small kindness that he did not deserve._

  


  
***   


  
With a pained whimper, Yosuke started awake again. He’d thought he’d heard voices, just now, but when he listened for them, all he could hear was the shadow outside trying to figure out how to work a sliding door. He wondered how long it would be before it got hungry enough to simply break it down.

Again he tried to call on Susano-O, closing his eyes and focusing with the limited intensity he could muster, but nothing happened. It felt like he’d get halfway there, just start to feel the warm, familiar presence in his mind begin to take physical shape, and then a jolt of pain in his legs would tear away his concentration. His head swam with the effort. Again… he had to keep trying…

  


  
***   


  
_Souji’s confession came in autumn, just after Halloween – two years to the day that they’d rushed inside a television to save Nanako. It didn’t come in person, or over the phone, or in an e-mail, but instead was handed to him by the mailman as he arrived home from a shift at Junes that day, tucked inside what looked to be a lovingly hand-crafted envelope. Souji had weird hobbies._

_He tore it open as he rushed upstairs to his room, his eyes already scanning the handwriting arranged in neat little columns down the page as he tossed his bag aside and collapsed onto his bed. Souji had been oddly busy lately, always seeming to be somewhere else whenever he called, so finally getting some sign of life from his best friend was a welcome relief. Even if it was a little weird. Who still wrote letters when they kept a cell phone in their pocket at all times? But as he read the letter, filled with mostly meaningless chatter and mundane details of his second term at university, he found himself smiling absentmindedly. There was something about seeing words that Souji had written personally that was almost like having him here. There was a good deal of Souji in his handwriting, all evenness and understatement and clarity, and staring at it was as familiar and comforting as hearing his voice. This could have been handed to him by Souji himself. This could have been a note passed between them in class, just two years ago._

_Except for the way it ended._

‘There’s some other news, but to understand it, you need to know that there was something I didn’t tell you when I saw you this summer. I’d been thinking about it for a long time, never really knowing what to do, not really being able to talk to anyone about it, but Nanako-chan somehow put things in perspective for me. Can you believe it? She told me that I’d made a promise. I’d promised the two of you that I’d always come back. I thought maybe she’d forgotten by now, but I guess I should have known better. Teddie would be proud of her. Anyway, I had a long time to think about that on the train back here, and by the time I got home, I knew what I had to do.

‘Right after term started, I broke things off with Kazumi-senpai.’

_Yosuke gripped the page tighter with strangely cold hands. Now, like it had for years, hearing about Souji’s girlfriends made him feel miserable about his own embarrassingly feeble love life, and irrationally jealous in a way that would make his Shadow proud. _ Looks like even Souji has trouble with girls now and then_, he thought, before feeling ashamed of himself for it, and then he continued reading._

‘My roommates here were partying all the time and keeping me up all night, and I was about ready to start a killing spree or something over it. But… things had gotten pretty serious between us, so right before I left for Inaba, Kazumi-senpai suggested that we could get a place together, as an alternative to me going to prison (despite how popular I would probably be there). I said I’d think about it.

‘But after being back in Inaba, and after seeing –‘_ Here was the only error in the entire letter, a small, unobtrusive blot that neatly blacked out whatever had been written before._ ‘—all of you again, I felt like if I said _yes_ that I’d be leaving behind what I really wanted without ever even trying to obtain it. And Nanako-chan reminded me that I’d made a promise. So when I got back, I told Kazumi-senpai _no_. And I said that I couldn’t see him anymore.’

_Yosuke’s mouth fell open as his eyes locked on the decidedly masculine pronoun. Wait. What?_

‘I told him there was someone else, which now that I think about it, was sort of a lie. (But I couldn’t really tell him that I’d broken up with him for an entire town. Yikes.) So I said the first thing that came to mind: that I was in love with someone I’d met in Inaba and I couldn’t forget about him, no matter how far away he was or how little we saw of each other; that we understood each other in ways that most people worked their entire lives toward achieving; that he was probably the most important person in my life right now; that he was special to me. And when I said it, it felt like this incredible weight had been lifted off my shoulders, because I think I’d been wondering about it for a long, long time… But when I said it out loud, I knew for certain that every word of it was true.’

_His heart hammered out a violent tattoo against his ribcage. This didn’t make any sense. Except – except, oh god, it_ did_. A hundred little moments like the ones in Dojima’s porch and Souji’s futon flickered through his mind, a hundred smiles and shared glances and touches that lingered a little longer than strictly necessary. All this time, and he’d never even realized… Or had he? A handful of words seemed to jump off the page at him, as if written in blazing red ink –_ promise, special_, and that single, blotted-out mistake on an otherwise perfect sheet of paper – but none of it stood out as boldly as what immediately followed._

‘Someone once told me that when I found someone to love, I should write them a letter. That letters let you say more in a single line than you could say in a hundred speeches.

‘I hope she was right.’

_It was a full week before Yosuke worked up the nerve to respond, hands shaking as he found Souji’s number in his phone’s contact list and pressed ‘dial’. None of this letter-writing business for him. Souji might be able to take the suspense, but if Yosuke couldn’t get an immediate answer, he’d go crazy in the meantime wondering if he’d done the right thing. As the phone rang and rang, he chewed his lip and got in some of that agonizing while he still could. What if he’d misunderstood? No, he couldn’t have; he’d read the damn letter about a thousand times now, and reached the same conclusion each time. Was this the right choice, then? Was he_ sure_?_

_On the fourth ring, just as he was about to chicken out and snap his phone shut, someone picked up._

_“Hey, partner,” Souji said warmly, and all his uncertainty fluttered away at the sound of his voice._

_“…Hey,” he replied, smiling a little to himself._

_Yes. He was sure. He’d never been more sure of anything in his entire life._

_  
_

  
_***_   
__   


_  
_ And finally, Susano-O appeared in a blinding flash of blue and red.

Yosuke didn’t need to tell him what to do, and he closed his eyes and sighed in relief as a wave of healing light washed over his body. It wasn’t enough to even come close to fully healing his injuries – he wasn’t sure exactly where he was hurt, for one, and his healing had never been all that strong, for two – but it cleared his mind a bit and left him breathing slightly steadier when his Persona faded into the darkness, leaving him only a little dizzy. It was a start, but he’d need to rest a moment before trying that again.

As he lay there on the cold floor in the dimly-lit classroom, finally edging closer to consciousness than unconsciousness, a thought came to him, so clear and simple and obvious that it might have been Susano-O himself who put it in his mind after all this time, tired of constantly watching him stumble over and past it stupidly without ever seeing its truth.

How could he have failed to notice it? Ever since the morning they’d learned of Dojima’s death, he’d been fixated on how to go about building a new life for himself and Souji and Nanako, convinced that it had to be a _new_ life, one that was qualitatively different and separate from what he’d had before. He’d been so wrapped up in figuring out what needed to change so they could incorporate Nanako into their lives that he’d somehow forgotten what he now so plainly understood.

She’d always _been_ a part of their lives. She was woven tightly into the fabric of their day-to-day existence in Inaba and his relationship with Souji, from their early friendship to their first fight to how they eventually realized their feelings for each other. If not for her, when would he ever have gotten the chance to sleep next to Souji as a comforting presence? Or see past his mask of an invulnerable leader and glimpse his weakness as a human being? Or force him to make a silly promise like _I’ll always come back_? If not for her, would Souji never have taken the chance and written him that letter? Would it be his senpai he was living with now, their relationship he’d be hiding, even from him and all of his closest friends in Inaba…?

He chuckled to himself. Now that he thought about it, it was shockingly simple. The teenage Nanako who needed them as much as they needed her wasn’t an anomaly in their lives that had to be adapted to – she was an essential part that had always been _missing_.

The door suddenly rattled hard, and Yosuke shut his eyes tight as a horrible, inhuman wail rent the air just beyond it. Dammit, this couldn’t be it. He couldn’t die like this, like Saki had, alone in this world, devoured by these monsters. If he couldn’t get out by himself, then the others would find him. Souji wouldn’t leave him behind. But this floor – this floor was as dangerous as the one above it, and if they’d run into trouble on their way back…

In his mind, Susano-O swirled around and around, more eager now to come to his aid than ever before. Heart pounding and breath shallow, he stretched his arm and fingers out again until they found the grip of one of his knives and closed around it. He’d fight for as long as he could, but he knew with a frightening surety that he would take his own life before he would let the shadows have it.

The shadow in the corridor gave another bone-chilling scream, and then there was nothing to break the silence but the blood pounding in Yosuke’s ears. He strained to hear something above that sound, some sign of what was happening in the hallway, when the door suddenly flew open and Souji’s figure appeared in the dim light.

“Yosuke!” Souji was at his side in an instant, sword clattering loudly as it dropped from his hands and he began to move the heavy support beams off his body. Yosuke could just barely make out his face from this angle, but saw that it was dirty and darkened with ash and streaked with sweat. “Thank god you’re all right. We’ve got you…”

“He’s hurt,” Kanji said from somewhere he couldn’t see. “Here, lemme do that. You heal him…”

Souji leaned back and called out, “Daisoujou”, at the same time that he heard Teddie say breathlessly, “We found him!”, and he knew he must have been communicating with the others, wherever they were. Another wave of healing light washed over his body, and Yosuke groaned in relief as the pain in his lower body eased and the strength returned more fully to his hands.

“Can you move?” Souji asked, supporting his back and shoulders, and Yosuke nodded.

“Yeah, I can now. Thanks, guys,” he said, stretching out his legs as Kanji carefully lifted the last of the broken beams off them. “Ugh, stupid shadow surprised me. Sorry…”

Souji reached out, taking his broken glasses between his fingers and sliding them down off his nose. “It’s okay,” he said. “I knew you couldn’t see properly. I should have kept a closer eye on you.”

“Yeah, well… now it’s even worse,” he muttered, taking the glasses from him and shoving them into his pocket with the other pair, which he indeed found equally broken.

_We found Nanako-chan_, said Rise’s disembodied voice, echoing in their minds. _She’s on the ninth floor. Get up here as soon as you can, but be careful!_

Souji stood up and extended his hand to help Yosuke to his feet, which he gratefully accepted.

“Stay close to me,” he told him. “I’ll lead the way.”

Together, the four of them began the dangerous trek back up to where the others were waiting, and if either Kanji or Teddie thought anything of the way his and Souji’s hands remained joined along the way, they didn’t say a word about it.


	17. Chapter 17

The path back through the smoke and fire was marked for them by the puddles of water Suzuka Gongen had left behind, although Souji had been careful to commit the first half of the path to memory. They made their careful way through the fire, Souji pulling Yosuke close behind him, Teddie shouting out that they were getting nearer, Kanji bringing up the rear with his coat covering his head, and eventually, the fire doors that signaled the end of the floor appeared. As they drew closer to their friends with every step, Souji became increasingly aware of the fact that Yosuke’s hand was still clutched tightly in his as they now dared to break into a run along the smoky, blazing corridor, and he waited for him to pull it away before they could cross the threshold of the fire doors and be seen.

But it didn’t happen. And he realized with some alarm that the decision about whether to keep their secret any longer had arrived very suddenly, as all these kinds of decisions tended to arrive.

In the face of everything else – being inside the TV world again, the prospect of having to fight Nanako’s Shadow, the abject terror of seeing Yosuke disappear beneath the collapsing floorboards – this felt like nothing. How could acknowledging the nature of their relationship, something that had brought him such tremendous happiness, be any harder than any of those things? It was such a simple, taken for granted fact of his life that hiding it now seemed to bring him nothing but a healthy dose of guilt. Sure, it was none of Inaba’s business who he chose to share his life with, and that was definitely safer for them in the long run, but his friends… the same friends who were with him now, charging bravely onward at the risk of their own lives to rescue someone else he held dear…

But no – it wasn’t the right time. There were more important matters at hand, and Souji didn’t want any of the others to question, right on the edge of battle, whether he prized Yosuke’s survival over theirs.

_After_, he promised himself. He squeezed Yosuke’s hand, felt a reassuring squeeze in return, and then let go, and did his best to ignore the curious look he knew the other man was sending his way. They’d break the news after everything was over – to their friends, and to his parents if he had to. If they could just survive this and bring Nanako home, he’d do anything.

Kanji helped him close the fire doors behind them when they reached the stairs, sealing off that particular danger even as they pressed on toward a new one. They reunited with the others at the top of the stairs, just at the edge of the door that would lead them to Nanako.

“I _told_ you not to step there, stupid!” Chie scolded, but her voice was edged with concern as she said it. “Imagine the look on Nanako-chan’s face when we get in there and you’re the only one missing!”

“Why yes, I _am_ okay, Chie,” said Yosuke, trying and only somewhat failing to keep his playful tone steady as he said it. “Thank you for asking!”

“I knew you were okay, you dork…” she mumbled, and shoved her hands into the pockets of her pullover. Souji wondered if she was feeling a little guilty about not stopping the shadow that had lunged for Yosuke. She had a roundabout way of showing worry, when it came to them.

“This is it,” said Naoto. “Is everyone ready?”

As they nodded and confirmed one after another, Souji took a close look at all of them, seeing singed clothing and hair and dirty, determined faces all around. He felt like he should say something, be a leader and rally the team for one last battle, but his thoughts were completely scattered. Besides, if he did something like that, wouldn’t it be as good as giving up on Nanako? He himself had just proven that there was no need for there to be a battle at all. They needed to trust in her, have faith that she was strong…

And be there in case she wasn’t.

So in the end, all he said was, “Thank you”, and the others smiled.

With a deep breath, he pushed open the doors at the top of the stairs and was surprised by a light gust of wind, cool and pleasant on his overheated skin. Together, they stepped out into the chilly night air and onto what looked to be the school’s rooftop, cased in with chain-link fencing. There at the centre of the roof were the two Nanakos, one of them standing tall and alert in her sailor uniform, the other crumpled in a heap at her feet.

“Oh, you all came!” the Shadow chirped excitedly, yellow eyes glinting with a crazed sort of glee. “I knew you would! I’m so happy!”

“Nanako-chan!” Souji called out as they hurried toward her, careful to stop a little distance away. He wanted to avoid provoking the Shadow if at all possible. “Nanako-chan, are you all right?”

At the sound of his voice, the real Nanako lifted her head and turned to him with wide, frightened eyes, her shoulders hunched defensively. “Big bro!” she cried, and she immediately scrambled to her feet and ran for him, throwing herself into the protective circle of his arms.

He hugged her tightly, allowing himself for a moment to feel the rush of relief of finding her safe. “It’s all right now. You’re not hurt?”

Nanako shook her head violently, hiding her tear-streaked face in his shirt. “N-no, I’m okay, but – please, big bro, I want to leave. Please take me home…!”

Souji shut his eyes and tucked his head down against her neck to hide his grimace. Oh, how he wanted absolutely nothing more than to do exactly what she asked of him. But with the Shadow here, already out of her body… Honestly, he didn’t know what might happen to a person who left their Shadow behind in this world, either undefeated or unaccepted, and something in his gut told him he did not want to.

“Nanako-chan…” he said softly, as he raised his head and looked her other self directly in its shadowed face and haunting eyes. “What has it been saying to you?”

That alarmed her enough to pull back from him completely. Her face was pale and terrified as she shook her head, eyes darting to each of them at random as if seeing them all there for the first time. “N-nothing…” she stammered. She was lying – it would have been transparent even if he hadn’t known the truth, but knowing it for sure hurt more than he’d been expecting. “S-she’s not saying anything! Big bro, what is this? It’s some kind of weird trick, right?!”

“Ooh, big bro’s so _smart!_” her Shadow cooed affectionately. “That’s what I love about him! He’s soooo smart, and strong, and brave. He came all this way to find me, just like I knew he would! And everyone else came too, just like they all did back then! Everyone! Everyone… except…”

The Shadow’s lip quivered.

“Why didn’t he come?” it whimpered. “I… I was so scared. I didn’t know where I was or what was happening, and all I wanted was my daddy. Why didn’t he come to save me? Big bro and all his friends came – why didn’t he?!”

“He did try, Nanako-chan,” said Yukiko kindly. “He tried to save you. But he got hurt, and—“

“Ha!” The Shadow’s face twisted darkly, discarding in an instant its mask of a lonely, frightened child. “Yeah, that figures. Dad’s always got something to do, somewhere else to be when I really need him, doesn’t he? I’m never important enough for him to be there. Well, who cares? I don’t need him anyway. Big bro’s always been a much better father to me than the real thing.”

“No!” Nanako sobbed. “Th-that’s not true! I love Dad, I’ve always loved Dad! Big bro, please don’t listen, she’s lying!”

Souji tried a patient, understanding smile, and tried hard to ignore how forced it felt as it stretched across his face. “It’s okay, Nanako-chan. I understand how hard it can be when your parents aren’t around. It isn’t wrong for you to be upset, or—“

The Shadow whirled the baton in its hands and struck it down hard against the roof, lashing a tendril of fire toward him, but Yukiko quickly stepped between them and effortlessly swatted it aside with her fan. Before he could utter a word of surprise or thanks, the Shadow was speaking again.

“Don’t give me that!” it hissed. “You don’t know what it’s like at all! You don’t know what it feels like to know my dad would rather spend time with criminals than with me! You don’t know what it was like for me to watch him walk back into that house when I begged him not to do it! You don’t know what it feels like to know that the person who was supposed to love me most in the world abandoned me for someone who was already dead!”

“What?” Chie gasped, amid a flurry of murmurs being passed around the group. “Nanako-chan, you know why your father went back into the house?!”

Her Shadow laughed, and Souji felt a little stupid right then, to realize that he had gone to the trouble and agitation of meeting with Adachi for no reason. Nanako had known all along. If he’d just been brave enough to talk to her about it, get her to open up about that night – but no, for some reason she’d always maintained that she didn’t know anything about it. It would have been pointless, would have done nothing but upset her further…

“Of course I knew!” it sneered. “How couldn’t I? Daddy loved Mommy so, so much – so much that he cared more about what happened to _her_ than he ever cared about what would happen to _me_. He spent so much time working on Mom’s case, thinking he was keeping some big secret from me. There was no way he’d let his work get destroyed in the fire, much less something he was doing for Mom. Now that’s an act of true love, don’t you think?”

“Nanako-chan,” said Naoto calmly, “we already knew why your father went back inside the house. You needn’t feel ashamed about—“

But the Shadow was bound and determined to ignore their appeals to her. “Yes, I sure do wish that I had somebody to love me like that!” it said, loudly talking over Naoto. “Poor little Nanako-chan… All I want is for someone to love me, _really_ love me, more than anybody else in the world. Daddy didn’t love me like that. If he loved me, then he wouldn’t have died!”

“Your father did love you,” Souji said, directly to Nanako instead of to the Shadow that wouldn’t listen. “Please, Nanako-chan, you have to believe me. He adored you, you were _everything_ to him—“

“I knew it,” the Shadow sneered. “I don’t know why I thought you would be any different. You’re the same as Dad after all. It’s not me you want to spend time with when you come home from work. Even though you say you love me, that’s just another pretty lie – you’re so wonderful and caring, big bro, but what good is it if you’re like that to _everybody?_ And even if you do love me more than all of them, it _still_ doesn’t matter because you’ll always love _him_ the most!”

Nanako gasped sharply at his side as the Shadow jabbed its baton rather blatantly in Yosuke’s direction. Souji held his breath. He could see the line of Yosuke’s shoulders stiffen at the edge of his vision as he took a step back, could practically feel his friends’ curious gazes burning on the back of his head, but he didn’t dare tear his eyes away from the Shadow’s just to try and see their expressions. He supposed he should have been expecting this. Even though his own Shadow had avoided broaching the topic, it made no difference to this one: _just the three of us_, he’d said, making it as much Nanako’s secret as theirs, as tangled up with her issues now as it was with his own.

So she was jealous of Yosuke after all. Souji recalled only a handful of times in his life when he had been less pleased to be proven right.

“But I guess I should thank you for making me understand, Yosuke-nii,” the Shadow continued, taunting. “You said that love is wanting to put someone else before yourself, right? It’s about making someone ‘first’ in your life. Ha! Then what about me?! Why can’t I be ‘first’ in someone’s life for once? Why can’t I have someone who loves _me_ like that?!”

“No,” Nanako whimpered, “No, I…I don’t…!”

“That’s a trick question,” said the Shadow with a mocking smirk. “The reason I can never have something like that is because _I don’t deserve it_. I want love and acceptance more than anything else, but that’s not what I’ll get. It’s not what I deserve. What I _deserve_ is to be alone, for my father and everyone else to leave me. What I deserve is to be punished. And why’s that, me?”

“I – I don’t… I don’t know…!”

“Ah-ah, lying isn’t what good girls do…”

“I don’t know!”

The Shadow laughed gleefully. With Nanako’s repeated denial, the swirling black aura surrounding it seemed to grow just a little as it began to take slow, measured steps toward their group. “Don’t be like that, now. Go on, tell big bro everything. He’ll understand! Even though everything was all our fault, he’s sure to forgive all of it!”

“Don’t say that, kid,” said Kanji. “You can’t blame yourself for any of this.”

“Oh, yes I can! You see, I told a little lie before. I know for sure that it wasn’t Dad who accidentally set the fire. You wanna know how I know?” the Shadow giggled. “I know because it was _me._”

Souji felt for a moment as though his next heartbeat had been his last, like the blood in his veins had thickened and slowed and then stopped flowing altogether. His mouth opened soundlessly as the gasps and confused mutterings behind him began to escalate, but it took him several long seconds of shocked silence before he could make the words unstuck on his tongue. “You… Nanako-chan, you—?”

The real Nanako was in tears, shoulders trembling hard as she heaved huge, gulping sobs. The Shadow was no easier to look at. “That’s right!” it chirped. “It was all my fault!”

“But – but _why?!_” yelled Yosuke. “That doesn’t make any sense! You would never do something like that!”

The Shadow smirked again, positively thrilled at how much it had succeeded in upsetting them all. “You don’t think so, huh? Well, do you remember Jirou-kun? Mai-chan’s friend, that moron who set the fire in the boys’ bathroom at school? It’s kind of his fault, really.”

“So there was indeed a connection between the two fires,” said Naoto grimly.

“Yep! Only I was too _scared_ to tell you – big bro might have been upset, and you know how much I wanted him to love me! Jirou-kun hung around with me and Mai-chan sometimes – maybe I kind of liked him, a little bit. He had a habit of smoking though, and I guess Dad never noticed because he’s used to the smell of that anyway. I was so desperate for _someone_ to like me that I tried a cigarette when he offered it to me once. But I coughed a lot the first time, and he made fun of me for it, so I tried again at home, in the garage when Dad was still at work. But of course that was the one day he actually came home when he was supposed to…”

“And you hastily tossed the cigarette away before he could discover what you’d been doing,” Naoto concluded. “Unaware that the embers would flare up again later and start a fire.”

“N-Nana-chan,” Teddie whimpered. “You kept that all to yourself…?”

The rest of the team had lapsed into a stunned silence. Souji’s head swam. Nanako had caused the fire that had killed her own father. He’d had no idea, all this time, happily assuming that her depression was related purely to her grief, while she had been shouldering that incredible guilt all by herself…

“Souji,” Yosuke warned, and Souji shook himself, and gave a quick nod in understanding. Nanako was crying, trembling harder than ever and shaking her head, choking out _that’s not true_ over and over. She was in no condition to accept any of this. There was absolutely no question now that they weren’t getting out of this without a fight.

“Of course it’s true!” the Shadow laughed. “I was there! I’m you, after all!”

“NO!” Nanako screamed in anguish, and then to Souji’s dismay, she proved him right again. “You’re not! You’re _not_! YOU’RE NOT ME!”

They braced themselves as the Shadow’s laughter grew even more crazed and sinister, as its dark aura swelled until it enveloped it entirely. “That’s right,” it giggled, “that’s what I want! Give all your love and attention only to me!”

Dark shapes flew to the Shadow from every direction, and it grew and transfigured itself until it towered over them all, emitting a burst of energy that knocked Nanako off-balance, and she collapsed unconscious in Souji’s arms. Above them, the Shadow had become a twisted parody of what it had been only a moment ago; it now stood atop a pedestal, turned completely to stone, still wearing the uniform and wielding the baton, but its eyes were grotesquely gouged out, and in the palm of its outstretched hand, a smaller Balance-type shadow hung from its tightly closed fingers.

“I am a Shadow,” it said in a voice that boomed across the rooftop. “The true self. I will bring justice down on us all!”

“Teddie, come with me!” Souji shouted. He swept Nanako’s feet off the ground in one smooth motion and picked her up, running back with her to the relative safety and shelter of the doorway. When Teddie obediently followed and caught up to them, he gently set her down against the chain-link fencing that lined the rooftop perimeter. “Protect her. Take her inside if things get rough. Do not leave her side, no matter what happens!”

“Got it, Sensei!” Teddie huffed determinedly, planting himself firmly between Nanako and the potential threat. Satisfied with the arrangement, Souji ran back to the group, picked up his sword, and faced the Shadow alongside the others.

“Can you see?” he asked Yosuke, who snorted at the question.

“It’s kinda hard to miss, partner. Worry about yourself, all right?”

“All right,” he agreed. “Everyone get ready!”

They wasted no time in unleashing the best they had on the Shadow, attacking one after another viciously and relentlessly. Behind them, Rise and Kanzeon worked furiously to feed them information about how much damage they seemed to be inflicting on it, although she couldn’t manage to figure out if it had any particular weak points. It seemed like all they could do was chip away at the base of the pedestal, and occasionally at the Balance that hung ominously still and silent in the Shadow’s hand.

“You’re doing great, guys, keep at it!” Rise cheered them on. But her tone quickly changed as the Shadow finally moved, stretching its arm a little so it could extend the Balance further toward them. “Wait, watch out! I don’t know what it’s doing, but you’d better be careful…”

“Yeah, I don’t trust it,” said Souji. “Nobody hit the Balance, if you can help it.”

“Way ahead of you, partner,” Yosuke confirmed. Souji watched to see what would happen as he smashed his knife hard against the shimmering blue card in front of him and summoned Susano-O, kept one careful eye on the statue’s body as the blast of wind and green light engulfed it, frowned when nothing seemed to happen…

And then the Balance began to swing.

“Watch it!” Rise shouted. “The other shadow—!”

Souji didn’t get his sword up fast enough to guard as each of them was hit hard with an answering blast of wind. In his mind, Siegfried himself seemed to recoil and buckle with the force of the attack, and as always, the sensation of his Persona being staggered left him feeling weak and dizzy. The others managed to keep their footing, but the combined force of it and Siegfried’s unsteadiness knocked him flat on his back, and he was stunned for a second too long to be able to do anything but cover his head with his arms as he saw the statue bearing down on him with its baton, ready to cast its spell on him again –

“NO!” In Souji’s line of sight, he saw Yosuke throw himself in front of him to shield him bodily, while Chie deflected the trajectory of the weapon with a powerful and extremely well-placed kick. He sagged against the concrete with a shaky sigh of relief and tried to gather his wits again after the near-miss, but he only got a moment to rest before Kanji was helping him to his feet.

“Disregard previous orders,” Souji gasped. “Nobody hit the _statue_.”

“It took damage from Yosuke’s attack, but the little one just sent it right back at you,” Rise confirmed, and then her tone turned warning. “Be careful, guys. There’s no guarantee hitting the other shadow will work either.”

“Then let’s subject it to some empirical testing,” said Naoto, looking to Souji for permission. He nodded and called for everyone to guard, and she raised her gun high and fired off a shot toward the swinging Balance. It swung harder when the shot connected, but it made no sign of retaliation.

“Take it down!” Souji ordered, and the others obeyed.

Even after figuring out what to do, the Shadow did not make the battle easy on them. It did everything in its power to protect the Balance, shielding it with magical and physical resistance, and they were deeply disheartened to discover that the monsters’ rule of equalization worked both ways, causing Yukiko’s healing spells to continuously heal the statue as well as themselves. But they fought tirelessly, and with one last powerful strike from Souji’s sword, the Balance shattered to pieces and fell scattered on the concrete around the base of the statue’s pedestal.

From there it was easy, a painful but ultimately simple war of attrition, and finally, the Shadow toppled backwards off its pedestal, and was still. It shrank and transformed again before their eyes, assuming the form it had taken before the battle had started, and didn’t stir until it fully resembled Nanako once more. As it opened its eyes and slowly got back to its feet, Souji turned and saw Teddie leading a now-conscious Nanako toward them.

“She… she really came out of me…?” Nanako asked quietly, and Teddie nodded.

“That’s right, Nana-chan,” he said softly. “That’s why this place is so dangerous. We all had the same thing happen to us, so we understand…”

“We know it’s difficult, Nanako-chan,” said Naoto. “Especially considering… what it had to say. But it is only temporarily subdued; if you don’t accept that this Shadow is a part of you, it will attack us again.”

For the second time that day, Souji felt as though he should have said something. He’d always had some comforting thought or another to share with his friends after they’d faced their Shadows, and there were countless things he could have said to Nanako now – _this is just one part of you; we all have something like this inside us; you’re still you_ \-- but the words just wouldn’t be formed. In the end, he didn’t say anything as he watched Nanako slowly approach her Shadow, looking sicker and more apprehensive with every step. When they were closer, but with a safe distance still between them, she spoke.

“It… wasn’t lying,” she whispered. “All of it was true. It was my fault. But I was so afraid of what would happen if anyone found out that I couldn’t say anything. Me, big bro,Yosuke-nii… everyone… we were trying so hard to act like everything was normal, and I didn’t want it all to go away. I didn’t want to lose everything _again_. But it’s true. Dad died… because of me.”

And that finally moved Souji to speak. “No,” he said firmly, “he didn’t. You both escaped the fire unhurt. It wasn’t your fault he chose to go back inside.”

She looked at him forlornly for a moment, and then wiped her eyes on her sleeve, even though it did nothing to staunch the heavy flow of tears. “I-I’m… I’m so sorry… I didn’t want you to hate me! For not being able to save Dad… For making you move all the way here from the city… For lying to you all this time… I just didn’t want to lose anyone else! Whether or not you love me – whether or not I come ‘first’ to you or to anybody else – it shouldn’t matter, but…”

Not knowing what else he could do for her, Souji stepped closer and grasped her tightly in his arms.

“I don’t hate you,” he said gently. “Whether it was you or your dad or anyone else who set the fire, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome at all. Why would it matter to me?”

“You were still happy before,” she choked. “And it’s my fault that you’re here instead of where you want to be…”

“But I still came back. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“But…” She ducked her head and lowered her voice a little. “Yosuke-nii…”

Souji smiled. Behind Nanako, the Shadow watched the two of them very closely. “Nanako-chan… You were just used to it always being you and your dad. Just the two of you. But it’s different with me and Yosuke, isn’t it? Nanako-chan, you’re _both_ my most important people. I love you both. You’re my family, and neither of you is ‘first’ before the other.”

“Yeah,” said Yosuke softly, stepping forward to stand beside them. “I may have said that other stuff, but I never said only one person could be first, y’know?”

“But…” she sniffled. “Can you do that…?”

Souji pulled away just far enough to look down at her. “Of course you can. Do you love me any less than you love your dad?”

Nanako gazed back up at him with wide, watery eyes. “S-so… oh,” she said quietly, seeming to understand something just then. “Dad… Dad didn’t love Mom more than me. He loved us both the same? We were both…?”

Souji nodded. “He knew you missed her too, Nanako-chan. I’m sure he was thinking of your happiness, even if it didn’t turn out the way he wanted.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth and burst once again into silent, heavy tears, clinging to Souji’s shirt as she buried her face into it and sobbed. Behind her, her Shadow faded into a smoky cloud, and then vanished entirely.

“No!” Chie gasped. “She didn’t accept it!”

“It’s okay, Chie,” said Yukiko, as they watched Souji scoop Nanako into his arms once again. “She’ll accept it, in time, but… I don’t think she can right now.”

“Pretty heavy stuff,” Kanji agreed glumly. “Don’t think she could manage to turn it into a Persona, exactly, but I doubt the Shadow’s gonna come back out any time soon. She should be fine.”

“Teddie,” said Souji, causing the bear to snap to attention. “It’s over. Take us home.”  


  


  
***   


“Ugh, I hardly got any sleep at all last night,” said Rise, as they gathered around the televisions in the entrance hall. “I was out of my mind with worry. But I’m sure we’ll all sleep well tonight!”

“Hah, no kidding,” said Chie. “Looks like Nanako-chan’s way ahead of you.”

Souji smiled and adjusted his hold on her. She was much heavier than she’d been the last time he’d carried her like this, but he certainly didn’t mind. “I don’t know how to thank you guys for everything you’ve done,” he said. “It would have been hopeless without you.”

“Like we said – anything for Nana-chan!” Teddie cheered. “We’ll do our best to make sure she knows she never has to be lonely again!”

“I’m so relieved everything worked out okay,” said Yukiko.

Chie laughed. “Yep! _And_ now we know why Yosuke was so against moving back in with his folks!”

“Chie, quit it…” Yosuke whined, turning red and looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Not now, okay?”

Despite Yosuke’s discomfort, Souji decided that something needed to be said, if only to clear the air so he could sleep without worry tonight. “Sorry we didn’t say anything,” he apologized. “We didn’t want to risk it getting out and possibly bringing harm to us, or to Nanako-chan.”

“You needn’t apologize” said Naoto, tipping the brim of her cap down a little lower over her eyes. “It’s a family matter, and no one’s business but your own.”

“Also, we totally kinda already knew,” said Chie. When Naoto shot her a disapproving look, she added, “Oh, c’mon, what? You’re just upset that you were wrong.”

“Simply because the living room never looked slept-in is not sufficient evidence to assume—“

“You rely too much on the facts, Naoto-kun! Sometimes you gotta go with your gut!”

The colouring in Yosuke’s cheeks drained away in an instant, leaving his face a pallid white. “You were _talking about it_?! Dude, could you guys get any weirder?”

“What are you complaining about?” asked Rise irritably. “You have no idea how lucky you are!”

The colour rushed back to Yosuke’s cheeks as he floundered for something to say to that. Souji felt dizzy just watching him, so he turned his attention away to Naoto, who now seemed disinterested in the conversation topic (or at least was just pretending because Chie had called her on her mistake). “I’m not sure what difference it’s going to make now, but… we need to tell Detective Satou he was right.”

“Are you sure?” Naoto asked. “I don’t wish to encourage withholding the truth from the authorities, but as you say, legally it makes little difference whether it was Dojima-san or Nanako-chan who was responsible. It was an unfortunate accident, in either case.”

“It does make a difference,” he insisted. “One of them is the truth, and one is a lie.”

She didn’t quite seem convinced, but she nodded in acquiescence. “Very well. If that’s what you want, then I will inform him of what we have discovered, and we will consider the matter closed.”

He smiled. “Thank you,” he said, finding the word ‘closed’ somehow final and more relieving than it had ever seemed before. “For everything.”

They left the shadow world for the last time, and never once looked back.

  


  
***   


  
Dusk hadn’t quite fallen by the time they arrived home, but Nanako was still deeply asleep in his arms, so the first thing Souji did when they set foot in their apartment was set her down on the couch and drape a blanket over her. She stirred only a little while he did it, and then she tucked her head down into the blanket and was asleep again in seconds.

“I want to go nap in the bath,” Yosuke proclaimed, as he stumbled into their bedroom and began stripping off his burned and bloody clothing in favour of sleepwear. “Preferably forever. If work calls, just tell them I drowned, okay?”

Souji didn’t even get as far as undressing. He flopped face-down rather unceremoniously onto the mattress, smearing ash and grime onto the blankets and not even coming close to giving a damn. His brain was fried and his body ached and he was just so _grateful_ to be back in the safety of their home with everyone who was supposed to be there. So much could have gone wrong at any moment, but they’d made it. Nanako was safe. Yosuke was alive. No one else had come to any harm during the rescue. It was the perfect outcome, more than he could have reasonably hoped for, and yet…

“Hey…” said Yosuke. He felt the mattress sink under his weight as he sat down on his side of the bed, felt the light touch of his hand on his shoulder. It wasn’t until he went utterly still beneath that touch that he realized he’d been shaking. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he breathed into his pillow. “Fine. It’s just… been a long day.”

Yosuke stretched out beside him and pressed up against his side, draping an arm over his back and apparently not caring very much that touching Souji was getting his clean clothes all dirty again. “Are you worried about Nanako-chan?”

Souji was about to answer that yes, he was, before he stopped to really think about it. “No,” he admitted after a pause, and he surprised himself to know that it was true. “No, actually, I’m not. You know, for the first time since all of this has happened, I think… I really feel like she’s going to be okay.”

“Yeah,” said Yosuke. “I mean, I hate that it had to happen this way, but I gotta admit, now that she doesn’t have to keep all that stuff locked up inside her… I think you might be right. I hope so, anyway…”

Souji had reached the limit of breathable air with his face planted in his pillow, so he turned his head on its side so he could see Yosuke’s face. There was something to be said, he decided, for the peace that followed the realization and acceptance of a hard truth, and he had experienced an awful lot of that in the last twenty-four hours. What his own Shadow had to say, what Nanako’s brought to light, the fact that their friends now knew about and accepted his relationship with Yosuke… They were undoubtedly difficult truths, but obtaining them had left him feeling strangely at ease, like he was now better equipped to face the future that stretched out before them. Nanako was no longer an unidentifiable quantity, his Shadow no longer a dormant threat, their secret no longer only theirs to protect. He felt, for the first time in months, that he had some control over the direction of his own life, and unclouded knowledge of its most important elements. He felt more like himself than he’d felt in a long time.

Except…

“There’s something else,” Souji said, and Yosuke quirked an eyebrow in confusion, not having been privy to his internal monologue. “Something we’re going to need to think about. I tried to tell you this before, the night we saw Nanako-chan on the Midnight Channel, but… well, obviously it had to wait.”

“Oh, hey, right,” said Yosuke, in a tone that did not convince Souji in the slightest that it hadn’t been on his mind ever since. “Something about your parents?”

Souji nodded. “That time when they were here, when they asked you and Nanako-chan to leave the room – do you remember? They agreed to let me have custody of her until they come back in August. But they also told me that if I wanted that to continue, there’d be some… stipulations involved. Well, just one, really.”

The other man frowned. “That doesn’t sound good…”

“It’s not.” He drew a deep breath, exhaled it like it was poisonous. “They want me to get married.”

“They want _what?_” Yosuke laughed. “Dude, are they going to be disappointed. How did you get around that one?”

“I didn’t,” said Souji flatly. “There was nothing I could do. I had to say yes.”

He saw the way Yosuke’s eyes widened and his smile fell, the way his face practically crumpled and went pale and still. There was _fear_ there, real, deep, gripping terror, and Souji had to scramble to ease it before it was too late.

“I’m not actually going to _do_ it, you dork,” he said, and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the way Yosuke seemed to deflate in relief. “I just had to say I would so they’d let us get this far. Jeez, trust me a little, would you?”

“You asshole,” Yosuke groaned, punching him hard in the shoulder. “You almost gave me fucking heart failure! Don’t ever do that again!”

“Ow. Sorry. The problem still kind of stands, though. They’re probably going to come back from America with all these photos of their business partners’ daughters or something, and I’m – _we’re_ going to have to deliver the bad news.”

“Do we have to…?”

Souji nodded firmly. There was no compromising in this. He’d constructed a lie to obtain the life he wanted, but now he understood that in order to keep it, he would need to start embracing truth instead. “Yes,” he replied, “we have to.”

“Oh my god,” Yosuke moaned, covering his face with his hands. “They’re going to blame me for turning their only son gay, and there’s no way they’re going to believe it wasn’t even my fault—“

“Yosuke…” Souji waited until he was done despairing, until he met his eyes again, and then he smiled. “It’ll be fine, okay?”

“How can you be so calm about this? Your parents scare the hell out of me…”

“Because,” said Souji. “They don’t know it yet, but they’re asking me to give up one of you so I can have the other. And that’s one thing I can’t ever do – especially not now. They didn’t risk their lives to protect her. She doesn’t belong with them. She belongs here with me, and so do you.”

Yosuke clearly didn’t know what to say to that, his expression hovering somewhere between touched and terrified. Before he could attempt to respond, however, a small voice drew their attention from the other side of the room.

“Big bro…”

Souji rolled over onto his back so he could see the door properly. Nanako stood in the doorway, the blanket he’d draped over her clutched around her shoulders and dragging across the floor, her eyelids drooping as heavily with fatigue as the rest of her body. “I, um… I don’t want to be alone…”

She didn’t need to say another word. Yosuke sat up and grinned, and Souji slid closer to the edge of the bed, making space in the middle, and patted the empty spot just big enough for her to squeeze in between them. She crawled up onto the bed and nestled comfortably in the vacant space, and Souji took the blanket and spread it over the three of them.

“Thank you for saving me,” she whispered when they were settled, each with a protective arm resting securely over her small frame. “Both of you.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Yosuke laughed, and Souji nodded in agreement.

When they finally drifted off to sleep, none of them woke until morning.


	18. Chapter 18

_The air on the banks of the Samegawa was still and stifling in mid-August, and so the whole affair was considerably more dressed-down and casual than this sort of thing normally would be. It was Yosuke who suggested they bring a watermelon along, and although Souji gave him weird looks for days – at the suggestion, at the Junes checkout, in their kitchen that morning as they packed up their supplies and prepared to leave – he didn’t mind. It was an important detail, after all, and this was an important day._

_They drew attention from pedestrians who wandered along the flood plain road at the top of the hill, and curious onlookers watched the group of adults and teenagers staggering blindfolded along the river’s edge and attempting in between fits of laughter to smash open the innocent watermelon. Some stopped to cheer them on, some simply waved and continued on their way, but mostly they paid them no mind, and that was fine with them. They stretched out on the grass in the warm summer sun, and played in the refreshingly cool river, and afterward feasted on bento of varying qualities while swapping and bartering for the best items. It was the kind of afternoon that made Yosuke forget he had to work tomorrow, because tomorrow was impossibly far away and the moments that counted were right here and now._

_When the food was gone and the lively dinner conversation became subdued after-dinner conversation, he caught Souji’s gaze from across the patchwork of picnic blankets, and suddenly the pressing afternoon heat was almost overwhelming. They’d already agreed on this part – no fanfare, no embarrassing speeches, no sickeningly maudlin displays of affection – but that definitely didn’t make it any less nerve-wracking. It should have been the easiest thing in the world, but he couldn’t keep from shaking a little as he took Souji’s hand in one of his and pulled a ring from his pocket with the other. He did his best to convince himself that it was no big deal, that the others weren’t looking_ anyway _ because they hadn’t announced that they were doing it right this second, and that _ wasn’t_ really Nanako and Teddie giving pleased little gasps in tandem as he slipped the ring onto his best friend’s finger. Blocking out those snippets of reality felt like the only way he could manage this without passing out. It wasn’t until Souji did the same for him with an identical ring he drew from his own pocket that he noticed he’d put Souji’s on the wrong hand, and while they were laughing about his stupid mistake and their friends pretended they weren’t watching, Souji leaned forward and they sealed their unspoken promise with a kiss._

_Souji kept his ring on his right hand, where Yosuke had mistakenly placed it, and after an embarrassing encounter with the gossipy Junes floor staff who wanted to know which part-time girl he’d run off with over the weekend, Yosuke switched his to match. The placement wasn’t important anyway. Hell, the entire damn thing hadn’t really been that important; it wasn’t like they’d agreed to anything they hadn’t already, even if only between themselves. But knowing what awaited them at the end of the week, the foreign weight that now rested snugly around his ring finger felt as heavy and strong and secure as an anchor, and it calmed him a little. A lot, actually. They needed that security of their shared bond more than anything, and now more than ever._

 

  
***   


  
“So what do you think?” Yosuke asked, gazing at his reflection in a strategically-placed eye-level mirror. With a well-practiced nudge of his middle three fingers, he adjusted the placement of a new pair of frames on the bridge of his nose before turning to his audience. “Pretty sharp-looking, huh?”

Perched attentively on one of the nearby armchairs, Nanako tilted her head skeptically.

“Oh, come on, what’s wrong with _these_ ones?” he sighed.

“They’re too thick,” she advised him. She paused to look him up and down quickly, and then added in an offhand sort of manner, “And they clash with your hair.”

Yosuke shrugged helplessly, but slid the frames off and put them back in their slot on the rack without complaint. It had been three months since he’d broken his glasses inside the TV, but it wasn’t until recently that his benefits had kicked in at work and he could afford to replace them. Souji had insisted that money wasn’t so tight that he couldn’t afford to get something essential like that, and he’d been sorely tempted to agree with him on more than one occasion, but money kind of _was_ tight. There were still the exorbitant funeral costs, the weapons – and the rings – Daidara had supplied them, the donated clothing Nanako was already starting to outgrow, and a million other little expenses that piled up quickly. So in the end he’d sucked it up and, with help from Kanji’s incredibly steady hands, taped up the bent and snapped frames until they could hold the scuffed lenses in them again. He’d been weirdly proud of this impressively frugal accomplishment for weeks, even if nobody at work missed the opportunity to laugh at him for it.

“How about these?” he asked, slipping on a pair of relatively mundane black frames. “They make me look respectable, don’t you think?”

“They’re boring,” was her immediate response. “They’re not you at all.”

“Well then, what do _you_ suggest?”

She got to her feet and stood beside him, scanning the racks until she spotted what she was looking for and picked them up. “Here,” she said, handing him the pair of frameless glasses, which he took gingerly by the hinges to avoid getting his fingerprints all over them, and put them on. “Oh, perfect!” she exclaimed. “They look good, don’t you think?”

“Do they?” he asked doubtfully, giving himself an appraising look in the mirror. He thought they made him look older, mature somehow in a way he didn’t think he’d ever be ready to feel. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

“Mm-hmm. They don’t crowd your face, so we can see your eyes better. Big bro will like that.”

Yosuke chuckled, while privately wondering where the hell she learned this stuff. “Oh, well, I guess that settles it then.”

“Yep!”

Unable to argue with that compelling piece of logic – and they really did look good, he had to admit – he informed the optometrist’s assistant of his selection and they got down to the paperwork. By the time they were done, they were nearly running late for their next appointment.

“C’mon, let’s hurry home,” said Yosuke as they headed out the office door. “Your aunt and uncle’s train gets in soon.”

He was expecting Nanako’s good mood to flag at least a little at that reminder (or was that his own anxiety talking? _Projecting_, Souji would say). But she gave no indication that she’d even heard him, except to slip her hand into his as they walked.

“You’re not worried, are you?” he asked, as he hoped that his own worry wasn’t showing through too strongly. “Because there’s absolutely no reason to be. Me and Souji are going to take care of everything, I promise.”

She shook her head and smiled up at him, somehow seeming every inch as strong and confident in that moment as her big brother. “I’m not worried,” she said without hesitation. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

 

  
***   


  
The three of them drove to the train station in a car they’d rented for the occasion, and waited on the platform as the train pulled steadily into view and to an eventual stop in front of them. Souji had been quiet all day, Yosuke thought, as he kept one eye on the train and one on his partner, but that easy calm he usually exuded was notably weaker right now. A lot was riding on how this visit turned out, and all of them knew it.

As Souji’s parents stepped onto the platform and the cousins stepped forward to greet them, the solidarity of standing there together with the two of them dissolved instantly, and Yosuke was left feeling awkward and obviously out of place. There was no reason for him to be there, he was reminded, just like there was no reason for him to be living with Souji at all. The four people he was staring at right now were family, real family, and he…

He thumbed the ring on his finger, with his hands tucked deep into his pockets. No – no more of that kind of doubting, he decided, and he smiled and bowed low as the elder Setas approached him for a greeting.

They chatted amicably as they headed back to the car, and when they got there, Yosuke offered the front passenger’s seat to Souji’s mother, while he climbed into the back with his father and Nanako.

“I like your ring,” his mother commented. It was rather prominently on display as Souji took hold of the steering wheel. “Where did you get it?”

Without missing a beat, Souji replied, “A friend gave it to me,” causing Yosuke to smile at nothing out his window.

It wasn’t a lie, at least.

  


  
***   


 

“It looks like she’s really been adjusting well,” said Souji’s mother, when dinner was over and they were seated in a circle around the kitchen table. “I must admit I was nervous, leaving her here with you, but you seem to have coped extremely well together. I’m so proud of you, Souji.”

“Thank you,” he said, smiling. “I won’t lie – it’s been difficult at times, but I honestly don’t regret making this choice. Nanako-chan is very important to me. I want her to be happy.”

“I know, darling. That’s what we all want,” said his mother. “So now we need to decide together how we can make that happen.”

Yosuke steeled himself, tightening his hands into fists on his lap. This was it. This was what all the pleasantries and anxiety and scrubbing the apartment abnormally clean for hours on end yesterday had been for. They’d done everything they could to prepare – and now came the hard part.

“I think,” Souji began slowly, “that like you said, Nanako-chan has adjusted extremely well. We’ve built a comfortable life for ourselves here. We’ve found a great place to live, Nanako’s doing well in school, and I’ve got a solid lead on a possible teaching position starting in the spring. I really think Inaba is the best place for her to be right now.”

“Then you’ve thought about what we talked about the last time we were here?” his mother prompted him.

Yosuke tried with all of his might to merely watch Souji in his peripheral vision instead of glancing at him every five seconds. He had to poke at the remnants of his dinner just to give himself something else to look at. Beside him, Souji shifted in his seat a little, and dodged the question. “I just don’t think there’s any need to take her away now when things are going so well,” he said.

“Souji,” his father warned, clearly seeing through the non-answer, “you know what we discussed. We can’t have you raising Nanako all by yourself.”

“But we’re managing,” he insisted. “Things are finally stable here. You can’t possibly think—“

“Souji, please,” said his mother, and Yosuke felt horrible for realizing it, but he found himself actually surprised to hear the note of kindness and concern in her voice. “Try to see it our way. You were too young to really know what it was like for Ryotaro when Chisato was killed. It was so hard on him to raise Nanako-chan alone. We don’t want you to go through the same hardships needlessly.”

Yosuke finally allowed himself to glance sideways, and saw Souji hesitating. He knew what was giving him pause – his parents had been absent for so much of his life, but when it came down to it, they were still his parents, and they still had his interests at heart. They still _cared_. And it was hard to be angry at someone who genuinely meant well.

“I know,” he said at last. “And I appreciate that. But I’m happy with the way things are right now, and I think Nanako-chan is too.”

“Raising a child is a lot of work,” said Souji’s father. “If you would just settle down with someone, then we could think about –“

“I already have.”

To say any more would have insulted their intelligence. Yosuke swallowed anxiously as the sharply appraising gazes of Souji’s parents fell on him, and tried not to be hurt by the frank disappointment that registered on their faces, tried not to imagine that maybe if it were some other guy sitting in his place they might have reacted more favourably. Deep down he knew that wasn’t the case, that it was their son they were disappointed in and only him by extension, but his nerves were already shot as it was and now—

“Oh,” said his mother, in a cautiously polite voice that only barely masked her unhappiness. “Souji, dear, I didn’t realize…”

His parents weren’t tactless enough to suggest that Souji could get married anyway, at least not while Yosuke was sitting right there, but he got the distinct impression that was exactly what they wanted to do. Honestly, he didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Fury, maybe, or disgust, or if his luck was a hundred times better than it usually was, some sort of airy _oh, yes, that’s about what we expected_ response like their friends had given them. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t been at all prepared for the tightness in Souji’s mother’s face that made her look like she was about to cry. It made him feel _guilty_, and that was the very last emotion he wanted to associate with their relationship and their family right now…

“We’re been together for about three years, and we’re very serious about this,” said Souji calmly. “We both care for Nanako-chan very much and we want to continue raising her together.”

“Souji,” his father sighed, rubbing away at an ache in his temple with his fingertips, “that’s not possible. What will people think of you?”

“They can think whatever they want,” Souji countered. “Our friends support us, and I would hope you would too. Other than that, it’s nobody else’s business.”

“People will _make_ it their business. Things might be good right now, but you won’t be able to live in this little bubble forever. Sooner or later it will catch up with you, and then what will happen to Nanako?”

Yosuke looked to her. She had been still and quiet for the entire discussion, but now she was gazing at her uncle with an odd expression on her face. He couldn’t tell if she was confused by something – or if something had suddenly made sense to her.

“So you lied to me,” said Souji, his voice growing even quieter and somehow all the more frightening for it. “You said that if I settled down, if I found work and had someone else to help me, Nanako-chan could stay here. You’re going back on that promise?”

“You know what we meant,” said his father sharply. “And it wasn’t this.”

Just like the last time they had all sat down together like this, Yosuke wanted to crawl under the table and hide. The situation was quickly spiraling into disaster territory. Their friends had taken the news of their relationship so well, like nothing at all had changed, and day to day life with Nanako was so _natural_ that it was too easy to forget that their arrangement was considered highly unusual and undesirable by plenty of outsiders. He felt like Souji’s parents were speaking to them as though they were Nanako’s age instead of adults, children who had been caught doing something bad and needed to be reprimanded. He felt _ashamed_, and ashamed of himself for taking their judgement of him personally, when it should have been of no importance whatsoever…

“Then we have a problem,” Souji said. “Because I love Yosuke, and I love Nanako-chan, and I won’t choose between them.”

His mother found her voice again. Yosuke looked at her, and found her gazing distractedly at his hand – his right hand, the one he was holding his chopsticks in, the one that clearly displayed the twin of the ring she had been admiring in the car on the way here. “Souji, we love you very much,” she said. “And we’re delighted that you’ve… found someone who makes you happy.” Not that she _sounded_ like she was delighted, Yosuke thought, but at least she was making an effort, as she elbowed her husband to draw a disgruntled huff of agreement out of him. “But we understand that the last few months must have been difficult. And we know we’ve asked a lot of you, by taking care of Ryotaro’s funeral. I think if you’re serious about this, then you need some time to take things easy for a while, and to think very carefully about it. Let Nanako-chan come home with us while you get more settled here.”

“No,” said Souji firmly. “She’s not going anywhere.”

“Uh, Souji…” Yosuke spoke up nervously. When Souji glanced at him, he leaned over and whispered, “Maybe we should think about this. They’re still her legal guardians; let’s not get arrested for kidnapping, okay?”

“Then what do you suggest?” Souji murmured back.

Yosuke was at a loss. He knew in his heart that Nanako belonged with them, especially now that she’d seen the other world and her Shadow and was beginning to understand the importance of facing her darker aspects. What would Souji’s parents be able to do for her if something like what they’d been through happened again? They had no idea what kind of emotional burden she carried – how would they even begin to help her accept those parts of herself? They couldn’t, not like they could, not like any of their friends—

“Um…” said Nanako in a quiet voice. “Can I tell you what I think?”

The four adults turned to her as if seeing her there for the first time. “Of course, Nanako-chan,” said Souji’s mother with a warm smile.

After being given that permission, she drew a deep breath. “Big bro has always taken care of me, ever since I was little. He does a really good job. Yosuke-nii, too. I really don’t know what I would have done without them…”

Yosuke watched as Souji returned the awkward little smile she gave him, and then did the same with the one she sent his way, while waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop.

“But…” she went on, raising her eyes to her aunt and uncle, “I think maybe you’re right. A lot has happened, and… maybe I do need to go away for a while.”

Souji started visibly as a stricken look crossed his face. “Nanako-chan…“ he choked, as he turned toward her. “It’s okay – you don’t have to go with them just because they say so. You can do whatever you want.”

“I know…” she said softly. “And what I want is some time to myself.”

There was a long moment of stunned silence.

“Excuse us for a moment,” said Souji as he stood from the table, indicating with a nod of his head that Nanako and Yosuke should follow him. Yosuke practically scrambled out of his chair, not wanting to be left alone with Souji’s parents even for a second, and Nanako rose much more reluctantly. Together, the three of them went into the master bedroom and shut the door.

“Please don’t be mad,” Nanako begged. “It’s not that I don’t want to live with you – I really, really do.”

Souji wasn’t mad. He wasn’t even disappointed, if Yosuke knew that look on his face, and he did. Souji didn’t frown or really do anything at all when he was hurt – he simply shut down, swept it all under the rug, made his face calm and distant to at least keep up the appearance of everything being okay. To not make others worry about him. It was like a code: one expression stood for another, and it wasn’t until Yosuke had learned how to read it, through arduous trial and error, that he began to believe that their relationship was going to go anywhere. He’d learned a long time ago that this was definitely _hurt_, and not sadness or anger or anything else.

“Then what’s wrong?” Souji asked plaintively, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t understand. I thought things were… okay.”

Nanako looked away from him, down at the floor. “It’s kind of hard to explain…” she mumbled. “It’s not you, or Yosuke-nii, or Teddie or anyone else. You’ve all done so much for me, with Dad and with everything else that’s happened. I don’t want to leave you…”

“But…” said Yosuke.

She glanced up at him. “But… What Uncle Seta said was true, I think. It’s just a bubble, isn’t it? You all know what really happened and what’s still inside me, but then… I go to school and see my friends, and none of them know about any of that. I feel like I’m lying to them all the time. I feel like… I can’t accept anybody’s sympathy, because there’s still that part of me that thinks I don’t deserve it.”

Yosuke opened his mouth to contest that, but found that he couldn’t do it. He’d been lucky, he realized, that he’d had friends his own age to support him when _he’d_ gone through this years ago. He tried for a moment to imagine what it would have been like if he hadn’t had Souji and Chie and Yukiko sitting in class with him while he worried about the latest victim of the Midnight Channel, or about how best to hide all those scratches and bruises from skirmishing with the shadows. Wouldn’t he have _exploded_ with the need to tell _somebody_ the truth?

“And besides that,” Nanako went on, “it’s still… hard for me. I keep seeing things that remind me of Dad – like being at the river last week, or walking by his favourite coffee shop. Things like that. Just when I feel like maybe I can stand up again, something like that happens and it knocks me right back down. So – I think I…”

“Need to get out of Inaba…” Souji finished for her quietly.

She nodded. “Just… for a while. Inaba’s my home, and it’s where I want to be, but… I need a chance to stand on my own feet, and to face all those horrible things about myself. If I don’t… I’ll never be strong enough to live here.”

Souji was silent, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and staring down at his hands clasped in front of him. Yosuke hovered near the door, unable to truly process what was happening. Could she really leave, just like that? After everything they’d been through together, after all the pain and adjustments and hardship… After everything they’d come to understand about themselves and about each other and fighting through disaster after disaster until finally settling into something that felt _right_\--

“Do you understand?” Nanako asked them in a very small voice.

\--After all that, Yosuke nodded. After all that, it was impossible not to understand.

Souji reached out for her, drew her into a tight hug. Her arms flew around his neck as she bent over him, and as awkward and uncomfortable as it looked, they stayed like that for what seemed like a long time.

“I understand,” said Souji, and his voice only shook a little as he said it.

Nanako hugged him even tighter for a moment longer, and then turned to Yosuke and looped her arms around his waist as she crashed into his chest.

“Thank you,” she murmured, just loud enough so the two of them could hear her.

“Hey, kiddo, we love you. If you think this’ll help, then go for it. We’re behind you every step of the way,” said Yosuke, fighting hard to keep his tone light. “Just promise us something, okay?”

“What?” she asked, pulling back out of his arms to look up at him.

He grinned and winked at her. “That you’ll come back – no matter what.”

Souji had been watching them up stoically until that point, but as soon as those words were spoken, he quickly turned his head down and away, blinking rapidly like a particularly bothersome eyelash had found its way into his eye.

“Of course I will,” Nanako promised with a smile. “No matter what.”


	19. Epilogue

_April 2018_

  
“Is that it?!”

“No, Teddie,” Yukiko explained kindly. “That’s a tree.”

“The same tree you thought was it ten minutes ago,” Kanji grumbled. “Keep your fur on, will ya? It’ll be here any minute.”

Teddie wilted with disappointment, and scuffed his shoe against the platform. “Awww, none of you understand! Waiting is the worst part! I’ve been so lonely without Nana-chan around. Yosuke won’t talk to me at work or anything!”

“Dude, how many times do I have to tell you?” Yosuke sighed. “I can’t just leave whenever I want to go play in the food court with you. I’d be fired so fast—“

Yosuke was suddenly talking to himself as Teddie’s head whipped around at the sound of clacking in the distance that seemed to be growing steadily louder. “Is that it?!” he gasped.

“Yep, I think that’s it!” Chie sang. While Teddie cheered happily at this confirmation, she turned to Rise and sighed, “Ugh, I swear, it’s like dealing with a five-year-old. The whole way here it was _Are we there yet?! Are we there yet?! I have to go to the bathroom!_ It’d be annoying if he wasn’t so damn happy.”

Rise giggled. “Aww, I think it’s cute. You can understand, right? Think of how happy Nanako-chan will be to see someone so excited to see her!”

“It’s fortunate that your parents agreed moving Nanako-chan with them overseas wouldn’t be in her best interests,” said Naoto. “There are a lot of people glad to see her back.”

Souji smiled and nodded silently, and turned to watch as the train slowed and then pulled to a stop in front of their platform. Anxiously, they drew closer together and closer to the train door as it opened, and next to him, Souji felt a warm hand link with his in the crowd.

“Finally, huh, Partner?” Yosuke chuckled next to his ear. “Teddie might be over-excitable, but I think I understand where he’s coming from. It wasn’t really the same without her after all.”

“No,” Souji agreed. It was strange how, even after all this time, even though they’d lived with Nanako far less than they’d lived without her, the apartment still felt unnaturally still and silent with only the two of them in it. “It really wasn’t.”

When at last Nanako stepped off the train, calmly and confidently like Souji himself had all those years ago, she was immediately swarmed by the group, grinning as they shouted greetings and welcomes and threw their arms around her as if she would get right back on board if they didn’t. When he got close enough to get the chance, Yosuke hugged her to his chest and spun her around until she shrieked with laughter and begged him to stop, and when he finally complied, he set her down directly in front of Souji.

“I’m back,” she announced simply after she’d regained her balance, smiling warmly and extending her hand out toward him.

Souji’s answering smile broke into a grin as he took her hand in his.

“Welcome home,” he said.

 


End file.
